HISTORICAL FACTS

Women in the History of Computing Technology

"We never get a second chance to make a first impression."

Irma Wyman

Irma Wyman

Irma Wyman was a systems thinking tutor. She remains in the history of Computing Technology as an eminent leader in digital processing, the first female CIO of the multinational company Honeywell, Inc., and one of the few women to graduate from college with an engineering degree during the Cold War.

Irma M. Wyman was born in 1927. In 1945, she is accepted into the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. She is one of the seven women in her freshman class, who most probably would not be there if many young men were not still in the military. Shortly after the beginning of classes the dean himself warns the students that just one third of the whole class will stay for graduation. Wyman happens to be one of the lucky ones. By the time she graduates in 1949, the Cold War is in full swing. This fact makes it easy for her to take a research position calculating guided missile trajectories. Thus she becomes one of the first civilians to learn to use an “automatic computer.” In the course of time, Honeywell Information Systems, Inc. acquires the company she works for, and she moves to Minneapolis.

Irma Wyman

By the time Wyman retires, she has become vice president of Honeywell Corporate Information Management (CIM). On 28 April, 2007, she joins former U.S. president Bill Clinton, J. Max Bond, Jr., and Philip Converse in receiving an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the University of Michigan.

On her retirement from the computing industry, Irma Wyman begins a second career in the Episcopal Church, where she is currently an Archdeacon of the Diocese of Minnesota. She, however, never gives up her support of the CEW scholarship for women in engineering and computer science. Every year a number of talented female scientists and engineers become “Irma Wyman CEW Scholars.”


The main objective of the Women in Computer Science website is to promote the breadth of the field of computer science and high technologies and outline the numerous opportunities it creates for young people and women in particular. The information presented on it serves solely to meet this objective.