March is Women's History Month (March 8 is International Women's Day!)

March is Women's History Month, a month dedicated to uplifting the narratives of all women and nonbinary people whose stories are often distorted, minimized, or erased. The fields of software, computing, and computer science are especially plagued by underrepresentation when it comes to gender and its intersections with race, ethnicity, geography, and family income.


Research shows that around age 12, both boys and girls have a similar level of interest in computer science. The difference is that women and girls are half as likely to be encouraged to explore it. That's especially important considering that students whoa re told by a parent or a teacher that they'd be good at the subject are up to 3x more likely to be interested in learning CS in the future.

March 1 - Ada Lovelace - World's First Computer Programmer

• Had a passion and gift for mathematics from a young age. 
• Is credited with being the world's first computer programmer, as she drafted plans for how a machine called the Analytical Engine could perform computations. 
• The machine, invented by her friend, mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage, is considered to be the first general computer. 
• Lovelace detailed applications for the Analytical Engine that relate to how computers are used today.
• Lovelace is remembered annually on Ada Lovelace Day, held on the second Tuesday of October. 

March 8 - Grace Hopper - Pioneers Computer Programming

• An admiral in the United States Navy and a computer scientist. 
• Was one of the first programmers for the Harvard Mark I computer, which was a general purposes electromechanical computer used in the war effort for World War II
• In 1944, she created a 500-page Manual of Operations for the Automatic Sequence-Controlled Calculator for the computer, which detailed the foundational operating principles of computing machines.
• Hopper is also the inventor of the compiler, an intermediate program that translates English language instructions into the language of the target computer. This invention influenced other computing developments, like code optimization, subroutines, and formula translation. 
• Hopper is remembered at the annual Grace Hopper Celebration, the world's largest gathering of women technologists.

March 15 - Katherine Johnson - Executes Critical Space Calculations

• One of the women immortalized in the 2016 book and movie Hidden Figures. 
• Helped confirm the accuracy of electronic computers used by NASA and performed critical calculations that ensured safe space travel from the 1950s on. 
• Co Authored a research report that used equations for orbital spaceflight in 1960
• Performed trajectory analysis for the first human space flight in 1961
• Ran equations on a desktop mechanical calculating machine before the 1962 orbital mission of John Glenn.
• Worked on calculations for Project Apollo's Lunar Lander, the Space Shuttle, and the Earth Resources Satellite. 
• In 2015, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

March 22 - Margaret Hamilton - Takes Humans to the Moon.

• An American computer scientist and systems engineer from Indiana 
• Led the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. 
• NASA credits her with coining the term “software engineering.” 
• Worked on software development for Apollo 11, the first spacecraft to complete a successful mission that placed humans on the moon in 1969. Hamilton's insistence on thorough testing is credited with the mission's success and safety of its astronauts.
• The guidance software that Hamilton helped develop for Apollo was later adapted for use in Skylab, the space shuttle, and the first digital fly-by-wire systems in aircraft. 
• Received the NASA Exceptional Space Act Award for technical and scientific contributions in 2003 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in 2016.

March 29 - Adele Goldberg - Develops the Blueprint for Graphica User Interfaces

• Developed some of the world's most notable programming languages that have influenced modern graphical user interfaces today, according to IT History Society. 
• Created much of the documentation for the reflective programming language Smalltalk-80, which introduced the programming environment of overlapping windows on graphic display screens in the 1970s. 
• Involved in creating influential design templates used in software design, some of which guided the development of the Apple Macintosh desktop environment.
• President of the Association for Computing Machinery from 1984 to 1986. 
• Since 2014, she has been a member of the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies Scientific Advisory Board. 

Most of the information on this page came from Purdual University Global