Frances Allen

Early life and education Allen grew up on a farm in Peru, New York, near Lake Champlain, as the oldest of six children. Her father was a farmer, and her mother an elementary school teacher. Allen taught math from algebra to trigonometry. She needed a Master's degree to earn a teaching certification, so after two years, she enrolled at the University of Michigan. She earned a Master of Science degree in mathematics in 1957.

Career and research

Teaching Fortran Deeply in debt with student loans, Allen joined IBM Research in Poughkeepsie, New York, as a programmer in 1957, where she taught incoming employees the basics of Fortran.

During this period, Allen often learned topics about Fortran only days before teaching researchers the same lessons. Allen planned to return to teaching in schools once her student loans had been paid, but ended up staying with IBM for her entire 45-year career. After retiring, she remained active in programs that encourage women and girls to seek careers in science and computing. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1987, to the American Philosophical Society in 2001, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010. She was nominated a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994.

She received the IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award in 1997 and the Computer Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computer Society in 2004. In 1997, Allen was inducted into the Witi Hall of Fame. She won the 2002 Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing. In 2004, Allen was the winner of the ABIE Award for Technical Leadership from the Anita Borg Institute.

Allen was recognized for her work in high-performance computing with the 2006 Turing Award. She became the first woman recipient in the forty-year history of the award, which is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for computing and is given by the Association for Computing Machinery. In interviews following the award she hoped it would give more "opportunities for women in science, computing, and engineering". Allen won the Turing award 19 years after her collaborator, John Cocke, won the same award.

In 2020, after Allen's death, IEEE created the Allen Medal to honor "innovative work in computing leading to lasting impact on other fields of engineering, technology or science". This was the second IEEE Medal to be named after a woman.

Allen was a mountain climber and member of the American Alpine Club.