Lynn Conway, a transgender computer scientist, was known for her work in designing computer chips, but credit for her work was often given to menLynn Conway may hold the record for longest delay between being unfairly fired and receiving an apology for it. In 1968, IBM – a company that now covers its logo in a rainbow flag each June for Pride Month – fired Conway when she expressed her intention to transition. She died on June 9, 2024 at age 86.
Although Conway’s start as a trans woman while at IBM was inauspicious, she quickly found a new job under her post-transition name and identity at the prestigious Xerox PARC and for many years kept the fact that she was trans from her employers to avoid being unfairly dismissed again. In so doing, Conway escaped becoming a target of thethat dominated mainstream media in the 20th century. At the same time, however, this meant she was also not able to fully tell her story..
Maximizing the number of transistors on a chip meant that the resulting computer using that chip could be as fast and powerful as possible. For this innovation, Conway received industry and academic recognition. However, that recognition was long delayed.
As a result, in 1999 she came out publicly as trans and became a vocal supporter of trans rights and of other trans people in high tech. She kept a detailed website that talked about her trans experience in order to try to help other trans people, especially trans women on the verge of coming out, Despite Conway’s earliest career setback, which nearly cost her both her livelihood and her family, she went on to have an illustrious career in computing. Her assessment of both her place and the place of other women in the field continues to teach us an important lesson about gender and computing – just as the chip architecture that she co-designed continues to shape what is possible for people to do with the computers that shape our work and personal lives.
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