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http://blogs.sun.com/woodjr/date/20070221 Wednesday February 21, 2007

First Woman Recipient of Prestigious Turing Award

Congratulations to Frances Allen of IBM, who has become the first woman to receive the Turing Award (often called the "Nobel Prize of computing").

The announcement provides a nice contrast to the ongoing struggle to attract more women to engineering fields. Mechanical Engineering Magazine recently had a feature article on the subject, which I noticed due to Sun blogger Pamela Kong's reference. Though these focus on mechanical engineering, other engineering fields (such as computer science) also face the issue.

Hopefully achievements such as Ms. Allen's can be used in outreach programs to attract more women to engineering degree programs (and subsequent careers).


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