Gloria Gordon Bolotsky

Gloria Ruth Bolotsky ( Gordon; July 28, 1921 – June 30, 2009) was an American computer scientist, one of the early programmers of the ENIAC computer.

Early life Gloria Ruth Gordon was born in New York City on July 28 1921. She attended a nursing school, but eventually graduated with a degree in mathematics from Brooklyn College.

She married Max Bolotsky in 1948 and used his surname thereafter.

Career Gordon worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a mathematician before moving to Philadelphia to join the University of Pennsylvania's engineering school in the 1940s. She was part of a team of around a hundred scientists who participated in the programming of the ENIAC computer, which was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the US Army. The initial programming had been done by six women.

In 1946, Life magazine published a photograph of the ENIAC with two women working on it. Although the women were not identified at the time, the woman crouching was later revealed to be Gordon, while the other one was co-worker Esther Gerston.

From Philadelphia, she was hired to a secret group at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in 1947. In the 1950s, Gloria Bolotsky worked as a high school mathematics teacher in Towson for a year.

Selected publications