Jean Sammet
Jean Sammetwas born in New York City in 1928. She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke and her M.A. from the University of Illinois. From 1958Ð61, she worked at Sylvania Electric Products and managed the basic software development for MOBIDIC, a computer built for the Army Signal Corps.
She was one of group of women who were in the forefront of creating the computer languages such as FLOW-MATIC, LISP, BASIC and COBOL, between 1950-1970. Jean Sammet headed the IBM Boston Advanced Programming Department in Cambridge during which time she created the idea that led to the development of FORMAC ( FOrmula MAnipulation Compiler) the first significantly used language for doing symbolic mathematics.
Seshat Goddess of Numbers
References:
Mothers and Daughter of Invention by Autumn Stanley (Rutgers University Press, 1995) pp. 464-465.
Jean Sammet
Notable Women of Computing
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Minerva's Machine: Women and Computing
