On August 4, Frances Allen, the world's first Turing Award female winner, passed away at the age of 88, which happened to be her birthday. She is also the first female academician in IBM history. Her research has influenced the development of computers and laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution.
"Her research has almost affected the entire course of computer science development." In February 2007, the Turing Award was awarded to a woman for the first time in recognition of her pioneering contributions in compiler design and machine architecture.
Allen, as one of the few women in the early computer industry, paved the way for today's efficient and fast applications. "She broke the invisible top barrier," her colleague Mark Wegman told the New York Times. "At the time, no one even thought that someone like her could achieve her achievements."
In 1957, after receiving a master's degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan, Allen entered the IBM Research Department in Poughkeepsie, New York, intending to continue working. Until the student loan is paid off. She taught IBM employees the basics of the new Fortran language and later became one of the three designers of the company's Stretch-Harvest project.
According to an introduction in the New York Times in 2002, Allen said that at first people had a lot of doubts about Fortran, doubting how it could effectively make computer programming easier and more efficient. This is a part of her career. Main focus. "There is huge resistance," she said. "They are convinced that no higher-level language can do a good job like assembly language."'. But this work sparked her interest in compilation, she later said, "because its organization is directly inherited from modern compilers."
originally planned to only pay off the debt, but who would have thought that she would have done this job for 45 years. Image source: IBM Research Blog
Following Fortran, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Allen became one of the three designers of compiler optimization for IBM's Stretch-Harvest (Stretch Supercomputing). As a language liaison officer for the National Security Agency (NSA) of IBM, Allen helped design and build Alpha, a very advanced code cracking language, which is characterized by the ability to be outside the system-defined letters Create new letters. The experimental compiler of
IBM Advanced Computing System (ACS) becomes her next project. Allen designed and built machine-independent and language-independent compiler optimization components, which enable the compiler to automatically optimize programs to greatly improve performance.
Allen has spent most of his career developing cutting-edge programming language compilers for IBM. Her last large project at IBM was Parallel Translator (PTRAN), a system for compiling Fortran programs, introducing the concept of program dependency graphs, which are now used by many parallel compilers.
As IBM said in a thank you letter, Allen has made groundbreaking contributions in programming and compiler research.
Her work on interprocedural analysis and automatic parallelization continues to be at the forefront of compiler research. She successfully transformed this technology into products, such as STRETCH HARVEST compiler, COBOL compiler and Parallel FORTRAN products, thereby turning this science into practice. In addition to the Turing Award, Allen also received many praises and honors.
Earlier this year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) announced that it would award the Allen Francis E. Allen Medal, which will be awarded for the first time at the IEEE Honor Ceremony in 2022. This is IEEE's highest award, and Allen will win the IEEE medal of the same name with dozens of other scientific celebrities.
Allen worked at IBM for 45 years and retired in 2002. In 2006, she won the Turing Award. According to IBM, Allen strongly supports the guidance of other women in programming. She was selected into the International Women in Science and Technology Hall of Fame and won the Augusta Ada Lavres Award from the Women in Computer Association.
In addition to the brain-burning computer field work, Allen also shared his passion for mountaineering.
She is a member of the American Alpine Club and the Canadian Alpine Club. She has participated in expeditions to the Arctic Ocean and China's Tibet border.
In 1983, she visited China for the third time as a member of the China-US Joint Western Mountaineering Expedition.
In an interview with author Janet Abbate, Allen reviewed her love of hiking and equated it with her career: challenging and interesting.
"I just like being intellectually and technically challenging. My hobby, or I shouldn’t be talking about hobbies, but one thing I often do is hiking and climbing. You know, this is to some extent It’s the same thing: it’s a challenge and it’s fun. How can one participate in it? What abilities can one bring to it to change it?"
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