Machines Like Us

Frances E. Allen, 74, has received the first Turing Award ever issued to a woman. Established in 1966 by the Association for Computing Machinery, the prestigious, $100,000 award went to Allen for her work at IBM on techniques for optimizing compiler performance.

After completing a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1957, Allen joined IBM. John Backus and his team had just completed writing Fortran, one of the first computer languages designed to operate a computer nearly as efficiently as hand coded assembly languages, and it was Allen's task was to duplicate the achievement on other computer platforms.

Although now retired, Allen's work included writing intelligence analysis software for the National Security Agency. More recently she contributed to software design for IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer.

From Sci-Tech-Today