Friday, December 5, 2008

Inspirational

The other day, I went on the prowl for another women in ICT article. The best I found was another article speaking about the lack of women in IT, this time in middle to top level management.

However, a link in the article to a study done by the Anita Borg Institute got me thinking.
Who comes to mind when you think of Inspirational women in Computer Science?

For me, I think of two - Anita Borg and Grace Hopper. But I must admit, off the cuff I didn't know too much about them - so I started to do a bit of research!

Let me start with the aforementioned Anita Borg. Being a recent (female) university graduate in Australia, I know Anita Borg thanks to Google's Australian Women in ICT scholarship in memory of her. I started to dig around a little, and Anita Borg co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, and began Systers.

She sounds quite amazing, doesn't she!

So how about Grace Hopper?
What a question! A quick search on Grace Hopper yields results that describe her as a "Pioneer Computer Scientist" , and I find she has achieved ultimate fame in her very own Wiki article. You can read about her amazing life from a variety of sources - I'm not going to bother to list them all here. She was a Rear Admiral with the US Navy and in her long life was instrumental in developing COBOL and won the first ever Computer Science Man-of-the-Year Award from the Data Processing Management Association. Brilliant.

Who comes to mind for you?