Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, aka Ada Lovelace, is credited as the world’s first computer programmer. The English mathematician and writer worked extensively with Charles Baggage’s mechanical “computer”, the Analytical Engine, and Ada’s notes on the engine earned her a place in the history books.
Read: Influential women in engineering
Jocelyn Goldfein is the Director of Engineering for social media giant Facebook, and she is responsible for design and architecture of new products in Facebook’s engineering department. She’s also involved in recruiting other engineers for the company.
In 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew on the space shuttle Challenger for the mission STS-7. Ride earned bachelor degrees in English and physics at Stanford and then a master’s degree and Ph.D. in physics. The astronaut and physicist passed away in 2012.
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper served in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) in World War II and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language in the 1950s. She was also one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer and created the term “debugging”.
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