Computer pioneer Frances E. Allen passed away on Tuesday, her 88th birthday. In 2006, she became the first woman to win the Alan Turing Prize, the most important award a computer scientist can receive. She is also the first woman to have received the honorary title of "fellow" at IBM, where she began as a programmer in 1957. The company paid tribute to her on its site this Wednesday, the day after her death.
Frances Allen, @UMich alumna & the first woman to win the Turing Award, has passed away.
Allen's achievements in her 45 years at @IBM included seminal work in compilers, code optimization, & parallelization for systems including the first supercomputers.https: //t.co/lFtwCnZjkA pic.twitter.com/aE3RlXVSMi
The American is described there as having "spent her career advancing the computer industry and inspiring generations of technicians." Fran Allen has received numerous distinctions throughout her career recognizing the major role she has played in the organization of compiler programs or the development of optimization algorithms. “Its work on interprocedural analysis and automatic parallelization is still at the cutting edge of research today,” explains the company.
His entire career at IBM
The computer scientist was a member of several colleges of eminent specialists, including the National Academy of Engineering of the United States, the American Society of Philosophy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A Catalog of Optimization Transformations , a scientific article written in 1972 by Fran Allen, identified and analyzed many of the techniques still used today.
The American had graduated as a math teacher in 1954 in New York State and had been a teacher for two years, before resuming studies in advanced mathematics. She then joined IBM while she was paying off her student loan, but eventually stayed there until her retirement in 2002. “When she wasn't exploring new avenues in IT, Fran indulged in to his passions for climbing and studying environmental science, ”says IBM.
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