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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."

2 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