Women in the History of Computing Technology

"Don't ask whether you can do something, but how to do it."

Adele Goldberg

Dr. Adele Goldberg is one of the most respected computer scientists in the software industry. She works for Xerox Palo Alto Research Center for many years and is the cofounder of ParcPlace-Digitalk, a company which produces application development environments for corporate software developers.

Adele Goldberg was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1945 but grows up in Chicago, Illinois. She receives her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, her master’s degree in Information Science from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. in Information Science in 1973 from the University of Chicago. Both a computer scientist and computer corporate executive, she is best known for her common work with Alan Kay in developing the object-oriented programming language Smalltalk-80 in the period between the 1970s and the 1980s. The language itself is later used to prototype the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointers) interface at Xerox PARC, the cornerstone for today’s graphical user interfaces. For her work on Smalltalk Adele wins the Software Systems Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1987 and the PC Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990.

Goldberg starts working as a researcher for Xerox at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California in 1973. There she manages the System Concepts Laboratory, whose team later develops Smalltalk-80, an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk-80 itself is designed along with a set of programming tools and a relevant user interface, which later remains in the history of computing technology as the first interface to use pictures that allow programmers to interact with the computer and to utilize a mouse to interact with overlapping windows on graphical display screens.

Adele spends fourteen years at Xerox’s PARC further developing Smalltalk and object-oriented programming in general. In order to get a wider audience and new applications for the language, she works out a technology exchange agreement with Xerox, and in 1988 cofounds ParcPlace Systems, a company which produces and sells development tools for Smalltalk-based applications. Goldberg herself serves as a president of ParcPlace from March, 1988 to April, 1992. On February 1, 1994, ParcPlace goes public and since then she is a chief strategist and chairman of the board of directors.

In 1984, Adele Goldberg is elected as President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She remains at that post till 1986. In 1987, along with Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls, she wins the ACM Software Systems Award. She also serves as ACM’s national secretary and as editor-in-chief of the ACM journal Computing Surveys. She is a Fellow of the ACM, a member of several ACM boards, and a member of the scientific advisory board for the German National Research Centers. Her most significant honors, however, remains the PC Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which she receives in 1990.

Since 1990, Goldberg concentrates primarily on issues related to helping computer programmers become more effective in using object-oriented technology to solve the different problems they encounter in their work every day. She also pays great attention on the topic of project management as well as on the design and analytical methods necessary to implement and advance object-oriented technology in general.

Sources

The information presented above is taken from the following online sources:

• -- Adele Goldberg (MUIseum, The Museum of User Interfaces, University of Maryland)
• -- World of Computer Science on Adele Goldberg (Adele Goldberg Biography, BookRags)