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Fran Allen Wins Turing Award

Posted by kdawson on from the one-small-step-for-a-woman dept.

shoemortgage writes "The Association for Computing Machinery has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. Allen,74, is the first woman to receive the Turing Award in the 41 years of its history. She retired from IBM in 2002."

6 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Ironic by wombatmobile · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was glad to hear Fran Allen had won the Turing prize and went searching for an inspirational quote that would help me to appreciate the genius that sets her apart from other humans.

    But alas... I only found these.

    So I'm left wondering... maybe Fran Allen IS a computer...(?)

    In which case... I'm excited! Fran Allen deserves the Turing prize!

  2. Fran on Wikipedia by shudde · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Without getting too far into discussing whether she merited the award or not, since I'm not really qualified to judge. I find it interesting that her Wikipedia entry was only created on 6 February 2007 by a username that has made no other edits. I've always found the Wikipedia coverage of computer science fairly comprehensive.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran_Allen
    Edit history of Jtaylord
    1. Re:Fran on Wikipedia by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've always found the Wikipedia coverage of computer science fairly comprehensive Coverage of computer science is good. Coverage of computer scientists is not. I was sent a link to a computer scientist on Wikipedia a few weeks ago, and it had the 'this is a stub' header across it. I tried searching for a few people I knew to be leaders in fields I've interacted with, and found that some were stubs and most didn't exist. Few people since Church and Turing have full articles, including most of the recent winners of the Grace Murray Hopper Award.
      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. Never heard of her before by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And I'm not alone on that, her Wikipedia entry is only two weeks old.

    She narrowly beat out a nun with the same name who lived 200 years ago, for first place in a Google search (they get an unimpressive 30k hits combined).

    It is quite possible that she is a unacknowledged genius, but it is no surprise that the first reaction isn't "finally!" from most people.

    Presumably, we will learn a lot more about her now. Maybe some FORTRAN parallelization experts will outline her contributions for us.

  4. Not only have I not heard of Fran Allen but... by cmacb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm surprised Grace Hopper never received the award. When I was coming up in the industry she was always cited as one of the great pioneers of computing.

    1. Re:Not only have I not heard of Fran Allen but... by OldAndInTheWay · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I am lucky (and old) enough to have attended a lecture by Grace Hopper. She had an uncommon skill at presenting computing technology that was accessible to both technical and nontechnical folks. Fascinating, dynamic, a chain smoker, and perhaps all of 5 feet tall. I still have one of her nanoseconds - a wire cut to the length that an electrical signal can travel in a nanosecond.