FEMALE TECH TRAILBLAZERS Let’s meet six women who broke into tech from different industries and backgrounds and left their mark in ways that transform the world around us still today.

Hedy Lamarr Often called “The Most Beautiful Woman in Film,” Austrian-born American Hedy Lamarr was an A-list actress of the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s. Her artistic legacy has recently been supplemented by acknowledgment of her pioneering inventions in computer science and other technology like traffic lights. Her work during World War II enabled Allied forces to circumvent frequency jamming and eventually detect submarines.

• The mind behind “frequency hopping” technology that is the basis of WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. • Interest in invention began at age 5 when she took apart and reassembled a music box. • Never received any compensation for her inventions, though today frequency hopping alone is estimated to be worth $30 billion.

Katherine Johnson

One of three Black “human computers” immortalized in the book “Hidden Figures,” Katherine Johnson was one of the first women at NASA to attend meetings…period. She was so precise and accu- rate, John Glenn personally requested she check the work done by electronic computers before he became the first person to orbit Earth in 1962. She was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal and was posthumously inducted to the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

• Used her study of geometry to revolutionize the mechanics of plotting space travel and orbits. • Started high school at age ten and started college at age fifteen. • Worked as a teacher before she was hired by NASA, where she worked for more than 30 years.

Grace Hopper

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was not just a computer engineering pioneer, but also a naval officer. She enlisted after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Computation Project at Harvard, where she was one of the first three computer programmers. Later, a team she led developed the capability for mathematical code to be translated into binary code.

• Invented the term “bug” for a computer error when she took apart a computer and found a moth was causing malfunctions. • Also developed Flow-Matic, the first programming language to use English-like commands. • Retired from the Navy as a Rear Admiral at age 79 and was the first woman to receive the National Medal of Technology.

Dorothy Denning

Dorothy Denning has been a foundational researcher and innovator in cyber security since the 1970’s in areas like database security, intrusion detection, and encryption. She has never been afraid to express controversial opinions or challenge the status-quo, including advocating for ethical hackers and challenging corporations to accept liability for defects in their hardware or software. • She has published four books and over 200 articles on cyber security. • Frequently called on to lend expert insight in national policy debates about cyber terrorism and information warfare. • One of the first inductees into the National Cyber Security Hall of Fame in 2012.

Susan Kare

An artist and graphic designer, Susan Kare is a co-creator of Apple Computers, best known for her user interface, design, and typeface contributions to the first Mac. Her happy, whimsical icon designs helped many new users overcome anxiety around computers, and her style has been emulated and imitated by competitors and new students of interface design ever since.

• Knew nothing about typeface when she got the interview at Apple, so she brought library books to the interview. • Completed design of the entire Apple interface in just one year. • Has subsequently worked for Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Rediet Abebe Rediet Abebe is a researcher into algorithms and AI with a specific focus on the role of technology in concerns of social justice and equity. She is the first female computer scientist to be inducted to the Harvard Society of Fellows, and the first Black woman to be appointed a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley. It is part of her mission to develop

techniques in AI and algorithms that increase access to opportunity for historically marginalized communities. • Co-founder and co-organizer of Mechanism Design for Social Good, a research collective focused on attacking inequality. • The first Black woman to complete a Ph.D. in computer science at Cornell University. • Served on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Working Group on AI until 2019.

Sources

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/thank-world-war-ii-era-film-star-your-wi-fi-180971584 https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/who-was-katherine-johnson-k4 https://news.yale.edu/2017/02/10/grace-murray-hopper-1906-1992-legacy-innovation-and-service https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/feature/Dorothy-Denning-Leading-authority-on-cybercrime-information-warfare https://invention.si.edu/susan-kare-iconic-designer https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~red/