In observance of Mother’s Day, I’m identifying some of the mothers of cybersecurity. These are very brief summaries of a handful of brilliant women who have made phenomenal contributions to what has become cyberspace. This is absolutely not an exhaustive list, but intended to give a little insight into how lost we would be without our mothers.
Lady Ada Lovelace - Mother of Computer Programming
She was a contemporary of Queen Victoria and worked with Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine. Ada wrote the code for running Babbage’s device making her the first computer programmer. She did this while wearing layers of petticoats and keeping up her place in her majesty’s court. And she was only 19.
Elizebeth Friedman - Mother of Cryptography
She served has a codebreaker for numerous U.S. Government and Military agencies during WWI and WWII. Her formal education focused on English literature, especially Shakespeare, and languages. Perfect for a cryptologist! She worked with her husband and, as a result of the customs of the time, much of her work with him did not include her name.
Heddy LaMarr - Mother of WiFi
She is known for her beauty and starlet roles in movies. What few people know about her is that she had a small version of her home lab in her trailer on set. Heddy ran experiments and worked on designs for communication systems between takes. Her work was so original that it was awarded a patent. Federal agencies to which she submitted her work sat on the technology until well after WWII ended.
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper - Mother of the Compiler
She earned her PhD in Mathematics from Yale before the women’s service of the Navy in WWII. Grace coined the term “bug” in references to errors in computational machines. She wrote operating manuals for early computers and co-created the COBOL programming language. Grace also wrote what is identified as the first compiler for programming languages.
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