Jean Sammet hardly ever let something get in the best way of her skilled objectives. As a younger pupil, she was barred from attending prestigious all-boys faculties, so she pursued her love of arithmetic at the perfect establishments she may discover that have been open to women and girls. Following her school commencement, she turned one of many first programmers at Sperry, an electronics producer in New York, regardless of having nearly no prior expertise with computer systems.
In 1959, after studying to code on the job just some years prior, Sammet helped write the muse of Cobol, a programming language extensively utilized in computer systems that carried out large-scale information processing jobs. Later, as a programming supervisor at IBM in 1971, she helped develop Formac, the primary generally used laptop language for symbolic manipulation of mathematical formulation.
She was honored in 2009 with an IEEE Laptop Society Pioneer Award for “pioneering work and lifelong achievement as one of many first builders and researchers in programming languages.” Her profession and contributions have been chronicled in an oral historical past with the IEEE Historical past Heart.
An early love of numbers
Born and raised in New York Metropolis, Sammet developed an early curiosity in arithmetic. Her gender precluded her from attending outstanding New York math- and science-focused faculties such because the Bronx Excessive College of Science, in line with a biography printed within the IEEE Annals of the Historical past of Computing. She attended Julia Richman Excessive College, an all-girls facility, and took each math class it provided.
Sammet knew she wished to main in math in school. In a 2001 interview with the IEEE Historical past Heart, she mentioned, “I checked out all of the catalogs from all the ladies’ faculties and determined Smith and Mount Holyoke appeared to have the perfect math programs.”
Sammet was accepted into each schools however selected Mount Holyoke, which is in South Hadley, Mass.
“I’m not even certain why I picked Holyoke, however I’m very grateful that I did,” she mentioned within the IEEE oral historical past. “It was an ideal school. Nonetheless is.”
She obtained her bachelor’s diploma in arithmetic in 1947 and went on to earn a grasp’s diploma in math in 1949 from the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
She joined the Illinois school as a instructing assistant, then in 1951 moved again to New York Metropolis.
Growth of Cobol
Sammet joined Sperry in 1953 as an engineer. She initially carried out mathematical evaluation and ran the corporate’s analog laptop, however two years later, she was tasked with supervising a rising division of laptop programmers.
In 1955 Sperry merged with Remington Rand, an early enterprise machine producer in New York Metropolis.
That gave Sammet the chance to work with computing pioneer Grace Hopper on the UNIVAC I, the primary general-purpose digital digital laptop manufactured in the US.
Sammet left Remington Rand in 1958 to hitch Sylvania Electrical Merchandise, a producer in Needham, Mass. She had utilized for an engineering place however was employed as a software program developer.
Whereas at Sylvania, Sammet was appointed to the U.S. Division of Protection short-range committee, which included a bunch of programmers from six laptop producers. In keeping with a Might 1959 assembly abstract, the DOD established the committee to design the specs of “a standard enterprise language” that would work throughout all computer systems—one which was “problem-oriented and machine-independent.”
Sammet chaired the assertion language subcommittee, which included 5 different programmers from Sylvania, IBM, and RCA. It was tasked with designing the muse of Cobol.
In keeping with the Historical past Heart interview, the subcommittee accomplished most of its duties throughout a two-week dash, working across the clock whereas holed up on the Sherry-Netherland resort in New York Metropolis. The subcommittee offered its proposal for the code in November 1959, and Sylvania and the DOD accepted it with minimal adjustments.
The language, structurally much like English, was partially primarily based on Hopper’s FLOW-MATIC programming language. Throughout a time when computer systems have been working extraordinarily complicated code, Cobol allowed early mainframe computer systems to primarily converse the identical language, eliminating the necessity to manually program the identical data-processing purposes into each new machine.
Management at IBM and ACM
After two years at Sylvania, Sammet left in 1961 to hitch IBM in Cambridge, Mass., the place she managed laptop language improvement throughout the firm’s information methods division. There she led the group that developed Formac, a formulation manipulation compiler. It was the primary laptop algebra system to have important industrial use.
After the system’s launch in 1964, she continued researching modeling programming and mathematical languages. In 1969 she had Programming Languages: Historical past and Fundamentals printed. The e book coated the 120 languages in existence on the time.
From 1968 to 1974, Sammet served as programming expertise planning supervisor for IBM’s federal methods division, which carried out defense-related analysis and methods integration purposes for the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Postal Service. She additionally led the corporate’s work on the Ada programming language.
She turned lively within the Affiliation for Computing Equipment in 1961 whereas engaged on Formac. In an ACM interview, she mentioned she joined so she may community with professionals working in her subject at Bell Labs, Carnegie Mellon, and different establishments. She defined that such alternatives nearly didn’t exist on the time outdoors of ACM and different skilled associations.
She chaired the particular curiosity committee on symbolic and algebraic manipulation (now often known as SIGSAM). She additionally served on numerous councils and planning committees.
She was elected vice chairman of ACM in 1972 and have become its first feminine president in 1974.
Among the many accolades she obtained for her accomplishments have been the 1989 Lovelace Award from the Affiliation for Ladies in Computing and an honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke in 1978.
Sammet died in Might 2017 at age 89. A longtime supporter of Mount Holyoke, she endowed a professorship there: the Sammet professor of laptop science.
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