Jean E. Sammet

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Jean E. Sammet (born March 23, 1928 in New York City , New York - † May 20, 2017 ) was an American computer scientist .

Life

Jean E. Sammet received her Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Mount Holyoke College, which was only open to women, in 1948 ; at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , she completed a Master of Arts a year later , also in mathematics. In 1953 she took a job as a mathematician at Sperry Corporation , from 1955 she was a senior programmer there. At Adelphi College she gave programming lessons from 1956 to 1958.

To be able to concentrate more on programming, she moved to Sylvania Electric Products in 1958 . There she was in charge of programming for MOBIDIC until 1961 . During this time she was an important member of the " CODASYL Short Range Committee" responsible for the development of the COBOL programming language . After working at Sylvania, she accepted a position at IBM and became head of the Boston Advanced Programming Department. At IBM she was responsible for the design and development of FORmula MAnipulation Compiler (FORMAC). FORMAC is an extension for Fortran and was the first practically used programming language for the symbolic manipulation of mathematical expressions and formulas. In the 1960s, she published scientific papers on programming languages ​​and the manipulation of formulas. In 1965, her employer presented her with the IBM Outstanding Contribution Award . In the same year she became a programming language technology manager in the IBM system development department. In this position, she led the development of the Ada programming language . Programming languages: history and fundamentals , published in 1969 as part of her work at IBM, was considered a standard work on programming languages.

She was vice president of the Association for Computing Machinery from 1972 to 1974 and then president for two years. In 1978 he was chairman and responsible for the program of the first ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages ​​Conference (HOPL). From 1977 to 1979 she was the first chairman of the AFIPS History Committee . During this time she was also the chairman of two ACM working groups. From 1983 on, Sammet served on the board of directors of the Computer Museum in Boston. In 1988, after 27 years with IBM, Sammet left.

In 1993 she took over responsibility for the programming of the second HOPL.

Awards

In 1977 Jean E. Sammet was elected to the National Academy of Engineering . A year later she received an honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke College . The Association for Computing Machinery recognized them in 1985 for their "outstanding performance". In 1989 she received the Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing .

In 1994 she received the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery for her work in the field of programming languages. Together with Jan Lee , Sammet was honored in 1997 by the ACM working group SIGPLAN for their “outstanding achievements”. On October 23, 2001, she was awarded the Fellow of the Computer History Museum.

Works (selection)

  • 1962: FORmula MAnipulation Compiler with RG Tobey . IBM Boston APD
  • 1969: Programming languages: history and fundamentals . Prentice Hall , ISBN 0-13-729988-5
  • 1981: History of IBM's Technical Contributions to High Level Programming Languages in IBM Journal of Research and Development, 25 (5), September 1981
  • 1986: Why Ada is Not Just Another Programming Language in ACM 29 (8)
  • 1993: The beginning and development of FORMAC (FORmula MAnipulation Compiler) in SIGPLAN Notices 28 (03) March 1993

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gillian Jacobs: When Jean E. Sammet Learned to Code, Steve Jobs Was Still in Diapers. In: glamor . Condé Nast Verlag , May 2017, accessed on May 24, 2017 (English).
  2. ↑ AWC: Augusta Ada Lovelace Award - Past Award Recipients ( Memento from March 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Sammet, Jean E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York, United States
DATE OF DEATH 20th May 2017