National Center on Women and Information Technology is wrapping up its summit today. I’ve attended much of the first two days, and the presentations on research and projects related to women’s opportunities in computing have been some of the best I’ve encountered anywhere. Lots to write about in those presentations! Let me begin with a little story about two remarkable programmers, Lucy Simon Rakov and Patricia Palombo.
Lucy Simon Rakov and Patricia Palombo were the recipients of the NCWIT Pioneer Award, and girl, were they ever pioneers! These two women were programmers for the Mercury space program, the first to send a person into space and home again. They did all of this with about 120 KB of raw computing power! (The next time I hear some would-be Steve Jobs tell me his code is elegant, I’m gonna laugh in his face.)
Mark Guzdial has a nice post on these great women on his Computing Education Blog:
NCWIT Pioneer Awards to two women of Project Mercury: Following their passions http://bit.ly/Lslrio
