29th May, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, 4.30pm
Hidden histories: the women who made computing in Oxford
Professor Ursula Martin CBE FRSE
In 2017 Oxford's Department of Computer Science celebrates its 60th birthday. Some remarkable women shaped Oxford computing: Florence Nightingale campaigned for a chair in data-science; mathematician Dorothy Wrinch computed Bessel functions; Dorothy Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize for work on insulin; Susan Hockey pioneered digital humanities; Linda Hayes, Shirley Lill and Joan Walsh got the software company NAG off the ground; and female operators and programmers were at the heart of the early large-scale computing efforts powering 20th century science. As well as fascinating stories we ask whether women, at the margins of status and power in twentieth century Oxford, were more able than men to take the risk of working with these initially low-status new technologies.