Female Pioneers in Data Science You May Not Know
Whilst many will be familiar with our Women in AI lists which include those currently pushing boundaries in the present day, we thought we would put together a list of women who have been instrumental in the advancement of Computer Science and Data Science, providing the foundations for AI in the 21st Century. How many of the below are you familiar with?
Dame Mary Cartwright was a University of Oxford Graduate in Mathematics at a time in which Women had only just been allowed to take degree classifications at the prestigious school. Mary then obtained a Yarrow fellowship at Cambridge University, later pursuing research in the theory of Functions through until her retirement in 1968, becoming one of the first to study what would later become known as Chaos theory. Cartwright had a distinguished career in analytic function theory and university administration, publishing over 100 papers on classical analysis, differential equations and related topological problems. Cartwright is, to this day, also the only Women to become president of the London Mathematical Society.
Considered an incredibly gifted individual from a young age, Katherine saw herself often studying at higher age groups in both school and high school, attending the latter at only ten years old. Best known for her work in spaceflight, Katherine began her journey through being selected to join the West Area Computing Unit, a group of Women who manually performed complex mathematical calculations for the engineering department, considered an essential piece of the computations which enabled space flight. The National Committee for Aeronatics, later NASA, at this time was a segregated organisation, with both separate bathroom and eating facilities. Later in her career, Katherine co-authored a paper with one of her fellow women at NASA on calculations for placing a spacecraft into orbit. It was the first time a woman in her division received credit as an author of a research report. Johnson authored or co-authored 26 research reports during her career. Johnson was also part of the team that calculated where and when to launch the rocket for the Apollo 11 mission of 1969, which sent the first three men to the Moon.
Considered to be one of the greatest simplifiers of the complicated, Edith Clarke invented a graphical calculator that greatly simplified the calculations necessary to determine the electrical characteristics of long electrical transmission lines. Prior to this, Edith had become the first electrical engineering student to gain a degree in the subject from MIT, Boston, in 1919, which later led to a 26 year career at General Electric with only a two year break to move from the US to Turkey to teach as professor of physics at Constantinople Women’s College in Turkey. Throughout the course of her career, Edith compiled eighteen papers, including two award-winning ones, becoming somewhat of a thought-leader in graphical analysis, hyperbolic functions and more.
Considered the “first computer programmer”, Ada Lovelace and her visionary approach to computer science built the foundation for the development of computers as we know them today, leading us to an era of social and technological change. As such, her contribution to the computer science industry must always be remembered. Whilst never fully recognised during her lifetime, the enchantress of numbers was responsible for writing the first instructions for the first computer program in the mid-1800s.
Through working with Charles Babbage, Ada could see that The Difference Engine, the project they were working on together, could be used for much more than crunching numbers and that it could, in the future, translate any content to digital form, including music. This was the first perception of a modern computer. Ada’s contributions to the field of computer science were not discovered until the 1950s. Her notes were reintroduced to the world by B.V.
