Comment by carefulfungi

5 days ago

Grace Hopper graduated from Yale with a PhD in 1933. In 1952, Professor Bessie Lee Gambrill became the first woman at receive tenure at Yale.

Many women mathematicians in computer science worked in the field because they were denied a university career path because of their gender.

As an example of how late gender equality arrived, Olga Taussky-Todd (Caltech) held only a “research associate” title from 1957 until Caltech made her its first female full professor in 1971.

https://mathematics.caltech.edu/about/prizes-awards/olga-tau...

It is not wrong to celebrate a more enlightened world by highlighting its trailblazers and encouraging others to follow their footsteps in breaking barriers.

5 comments

carefulfungi

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rayiner  5 days ago

If I ever got famous, I would hope that people would remember me posthumously by what I did rather than by the fact that I was the "first Bangladeshi" to do whatever. You just mentioned two women professors at Yale and Caltech. I am sure they did amazing things. But your post just says they were women and contains no reference to their actual lives' work.

  • carefulfungi  5 days ago

    It is useful to study both their inventions and to learn about the history of discrimination against women. One doesn't make the other more or less valuable to understand. I was responding to a post about gender discrimination with examples.

    Both are quite famous. Their work, and summaries of their work, are easily found if you are legitimately curious. Olga Taussky-Todd was a pioneer in matrices theory - certainly relevant and impactful in today's AI, LLM world. I see someone gave a separate synopsis of Admiral Grace Hopper's accomplishments.

  • sterlind  5 days ago

    Grace Hopper invented COBOL (or its direct predecessor anyway), did a lot of foundational work with compiler design, and generally (if you'll pardon the pun) led the deep integration of computer systems and programs into the military in the very early days. but yes, we should be focusing on what they've done, not just who they are.