Despite her significant technological breakthroughs, pioneering computer scientist Lynn Conway was fired by IBM in the 1960s after revealing to managers that she was transgender, and received a rare formal apology from the company 52 years later. He died on June 9 in Jackson. Michigan She was 86 years old.
Her husband, Charles Rogers, said she died in hospital from complications of two recent heart attacks.
After leaving IBM in 1968, Ms. Conway was one of the first Americans to undergo sex reassignment surgery. But she kept it a secret, living in “stealth” mode for 31 years out of fear of career retaliation and concerns for her physical safety. She rebuilt her own career from scratch and eventually joined the legendary Xerox PARC laboratory, where she again made significant contributions in her own field. After publicly revealing her gender transition in 1999, she became a prominent transgender activist.
IBM apologized to her in 2020 at an event watched virtually by 1,200 employees.
Diane Gherson, then an IBM vice president, told the gathering that Mr. Conway was “probably our first employee to come out.” “So we deeply regret what you went through, and I know I speak for all of us.”
Conway’s innovations in her field were not always recognized because of her hidden past at IBM and because designing the guts of computers was an unknown undertaking. But her contributions paved the way for personal computers and cell phones and strengthened our national defense.
In 2009, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers honored Conway with a “fundamental contribution” to the development of supercomputers at IBM and the creation of a new method of designing computer chips at Xerox PARC, awarding Conway a computer pioneer. Awards were given. “This begins a global revolution.”
At Xerox in the 1970s, Mr. Conway worked with Carver Mead at the California Institute of Technology to develop a way to put millions of circuits into microchips, a process known as very large-scale integrated design (VLSI).
“My field would not exist without Lynn Conway.” This is what Valeria Bertacco, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, said in an online tribute to Mr. Conway. “Before the digital age, chips were designed by drawing them with paper and pencil, like an architect’s blueprint. Conway’s research developed algorithms that enabled our field to use software to arrange millions, and later billions, of transistors on chips.”
Lynn Ann Conway was born January 2, 1938, in Mount Vernon, New York, to Rufus and Christine Savage. Her father was a chemical engineer at Texaco and her mother taught kindergarten. The couple divorced when Lynn, the eldest of her two children, was seven.
“I was born and raised a boy, but throughout my childhood I felt like a girl and desperately wanted to be one,” Conway wrote in a lengthy personal account of his life that he began posting online in 2000. .”
Her talent for math and science was quickly revealed. At age 16, she built a reflecting telescope with a 6-inch lens.
As a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s, she injected herself with estrogen and dressed as a woman off campus.
But the contradictions of her double life caused extreme stress. Her grades suffered, and she dropped out of MIT.
She entered Columbia University in 1961 and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering.
She was offered a position at IBM’s research center in Yorktown Heights, New York, where she was assigned to the secretive Project Y, which was designing the world’s fastest supercomputer. When the engineers moved to Menlo Park, California, Mr. Conway moved into what would soon become the global hub for technology known as Silicon Valley.
By then she had married a nurse, and the couple had two daughters. “Marriage itself was a fantasy,” Conway wrote. She never lost any of her overwhelming conviction that she was inhabiting the wrong body, and at one point she pointed her pistol at her head in an attempt to end her own life.
In the mid-1960s, she learned about pioneering hormonal and surgical procedures being performed by a small number of doctors. She told her partner that she wanted to have a sex change, which led to the breakdown of her marriage. She was banned by her mother from contact with her children for many years.
“When IBM fired me, my entire family, relatives, friends, and many colleagues simultaneously lost confidence in me,” Conway wrote on his website. “They were embarrassed to be with me and were very ashamed of what I was doing. After that, none of them will have anything to do with me.”
Looking for a job after transitioning, she was denied a job after disclosing her medical history. She didn’t think she could even mention her own IBM career. “I technically had to start almost from scratch and prove myself all over again,” she wrote.
“The thought of being outed and somehow declared a man was something I could not avoid at all costs. So for the next 30 years, I rarely told anyone about my past. A few close friends and lovers.”
She eventually found work as a contract programmer. That work led to a better position at the recording tape company Memorex Corporation, and in 1973 she went to work at Xerox’s new Palo Alto research center, a hub of brain power and innovation famous for giving birth to the personal computer. Point-and-click user interface and Ethernet protocol.
Conway’s innovations in designing complex computer chips with Dr. Mead were codified in the 1979 textbook “Introduction to VLSI Systems,” which became a standard handbook for computer science students and engineers.
In 1983, Mr. Conway was hired to lead the supercomputer program at the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She said the fact that she cleared her security clearance made her feel less stigmatized about being transgender.
She served as professor and associate dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, retiring in 1988. She has been elected to the Electronic Design Hall of Fame and the National Academy of Engineering.
In the late 1990s, a researcher examining IBM’s work in the ’60s discovered Conway’s contributions to computer design. Conway was almost completely unrecognized because of her past identity, which she kept hidden.
At IBM, she developed a way to program computers to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, thus reducing processing time. This technology, known as dynamic instruction scheduling, has been incorporated into many ultra-fast computers.
Fearing that his research into IBM’s history would alienate him, Mr. Conway decided to tell the story himself, through his website and through interviews with The Los Angeles Times and Scientific American.
In 2002, she met Mr. Trump, an engineer she met on a canoe trip in Ann Arbor, Michigan. married Rogers. She is also survived by her daughters, Rogers said, and six grandchildren.
After retirement, she became an elder statesman for the transgender community. She emailed and spoke to many people who were transitioning, sharing information about sex surgery and advocating for transgender acceptance.
She also campaigned against psychotherapists who sought to pathologize transgender people.
On her website, Ms Conway reflected on the growing, if imperfect, acceptance of transgender people since hiding her gender transition.
“Thankfully, those dark days are behind us,” she wrote. “Nowadays, tens of thousands of converts are not only living happy and fulfilling lives, but are also open and proud of their life accomplishments.”
