Alexandra Illmer Forsythe

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Alexandra "Sandra" Winifred Illmer Forsythe ( May 20, 1918 in Newton, Massachusetts - January 2, 1980 in Santa Clara County ) was an American computer scientist who was best known as the co-author of a number of textbooks in the 1960s and 1970s in computer science, including the first computer science textbook ever published, Computer Science: A First Course , in 1969.

Life

Forsythe was born in Newton, Massachusetts and grew up in Cortland, New York . She attended Swarthmore College , where she met her future husband, George E. Forsythe, and did her bachelor's degree in mathematics. She and George were both accepted into Brown University 's doctoral program in mathematics . Although she was an exceptional student, she was unable to continue the program because the dean did not recognize female mathematicians and cut her scholarship . She eventually left Brown University and graduated from Vassar College with a Masters degree in 1941 while teaching there.

In 1969 Forsythe published Computer Science: A First Course . In 1975 she published a second edition of it. In 1978 Forsythe published Programming Language Structures with Elliott Irving Organick .

Forsythe has taught at Stanford University and the University of Utah . She and her husband helped set up the computer science program at Stanford University.

She was married to George Forsythe. Together they had a son, botany professor Warren L. Forsythe, and a daughter, anthropologist Diana Elizabeth Forsythe .

Published books

  • Alexandra Illmer Forsythe, Thomas Keenan, Elliott Organick, Warren Sternberg: Computer science: A First Course . Ed .: Wiley. New York 1969, ISBN 0-471-26680-9 .
  • Alexandra Illmer Forsythe, Thomas Keenan, Elliott Organick, Warren Stenberg: Computer science: BASIC Language . Ed .: Wiley. New York 1970, ISBN 0-471-26677-9 .
  • Elliott Organick, Alexandra Illmer Forsythe, Robert Plummer: Programming Language Structures . Ed .: Academic Press. 2nd Edition. New York 1978, ISBN 978-0-12-528260-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Ada Project. In: www.women.cs.cmu.edu. Retrieved August 2, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Brigham Narins: World of Computer Science: AL . Ed .: Gale Group. 2002, ISBN 978-0-7876-4960-9 , pp. 243 .
  3. ^ A b James A. Inman: Computers and Writing: The Cyborg Era . Ed .: Routledge. 2004, ISBN 978-1-135-63695-1 , pp. 67 .
  4. ↑ a b c Oral History Interview with Alexandra Forsythe. Retrieved August 2, 2019 .
  5. ^ Thomas J. Misa: Communities of Computing: Computer Science and Society in the ACM . Ed .: Morgan & Claypool Publishers. 2016, ISBN 978-1-970001-87-7 , pp. 68-69 .
  6. ↑ Obituary . In: San Francisco Chronicle . January 4, 1980 ( findagrave.com [accessed August 2, 2019]).
  7. ^ University Digital Conservancy. Retrieved August 2, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Forsythe, Alexandra Illmer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Forsythe, Alexandra I .; Forsythe, Alexandra "Sandra" Winifred Illmer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Newton (Massachusetts)
DATE OF DEATH 2nd January 1980
Place of death Santa Clara County