Women in the History of Computing Technology

"The users for who COBOL was designed were actually two subclasses of those people concerned with business data processing problems. One is the relatively inexperienced programmer for whom the naturalness of COBOL would be an asset, while the other type of user would be essentially anybody who had not written the program initially. In other words, the readibility of COBOL programs would provide documentation to all who might wish to examine the programs, including the supervisory or management personnel. Little attempt was made to cater for professional programmers."

Jean E. Sammet

Jean E. Sammet is an American computer scientist also known as the developer of the FORMAC (FORmula MAnipulation Compiler) programming language.

Jean Sammet was born in New York City in 1928. She receives a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Mount Holyoke College in 1948 and a master’s degree in the same discipline from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949. In 1955, she starts working in the computer field at Sperry Gyroscope where she supervises their first scientific programming team.

In 1958, Jean is hired by the Sylvania Electric Products to manage the basic software development process for MOBIDIC, a computing machine build especially for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Meanwhile, she also becomes a key member of the CODASYL Short Range Committee that later develops COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language), one of the oldest programming languages.

Sammet joins the IBM Corporation in 1961. There she manages the Boston Advanced Programming Center. It is while working at IBM that she initiates and further directs the development of the FORMAC (FORmula MAnipulation Compiler), the first widely used computer language and system for manipulating nonnumeric algebraic expressions.

During the 1970s, Jean works for the IBM’s Federal Systems Division. Her work there is focused primarily on issues related to programming languages. In 1979, she becomes Software Technology Manager of the division and leads its work on Ada (an object-oriented high-level computer programming language) activities.

The peek in Sammet’s computing career is marked by the publication of her work entitled “PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: History and Fundamentals” in 1969. The book itself is described by critics as an “instant computer classic” and becomes a great success for its author. Meanwhile, Sammet also holds numerous positions in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), including vice president (1972-1974) and president (1974-1976). She is the general chair and the program chair for the 1978 ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL), and the program chair for the HOPL-II that takes place in 1993. Furthermore, she becomes the first chair of the AFIPS History Committee (1977 – 1979), during which she helps establish the journal “Annals of the History of Computing,” and serves on the Board of Directors of The Computer Museum in Boston (1983 – 1993).

In 1977, Jean Sammet is elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Her contribution to the field of Computer Science is recognized by a number of different awards, including an honorary Sc.D. from Mount Holyoke College in 1978, the ACM Distinguished Service Award in 1985, an Augusta Ada Lovelace Award by the Association of Women in Computing in 1989, and a Computer Pioneer Award by the IEEE Computer Society in 2009.

Sources

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

• -- Jean E. Sammet (Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia)
• -- 2001 Fellow Awards Recipient, Jean Sammet (Computer History Museum)
• -- Jean E. Sammet, 2009 Computer Pioneer Award Recipient (IEE Computer Society Awards, IEEE Computer Society)
• -- Jean E. Sammet (Cleveland State University College of Education in Cleveland, Ohio)
• -- Using, Maintaining and Enhancing COBOL for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), COBOL Overview, Purpose of COBOL (sourceforge.net)