Susan Bond

Susan Bond (born 1942), was a scientific officer and computer programmer for the Mathematics Division of the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE) in the United Kingdom. She worked extensively on the programming language ALGOL 68 and the Royal Radar Establishment Automatic Computer (RREAC), an early solid-state electronics, ICL 1907F computer. she was hired by British mathematician and engineer Philip Woodward. Her work mostly consisted of writing operating systems and compilers, not "numerical" computing. Bond later learned that her supervisor Woodward had been, as historian Janet Abbate describes, "'actively recruiting women' as an affordable source of high-quality researchers".

One of her first projects was reimplementing Syntax Improving Device (SID), a compiler-compiler tool developed by fellow RRE employee Michael Foster, to generate compilers for high-level programming languages. Their ALGOL 68-R was an adaptation of the ALGOL 60 compiler they had built for RREAC. The team that worked on ALGOL 68-R intended for the language to become the RRE's primary programming language, which could be used for scientific programming as well as business administration tasks like payroll and taking inventory.

Promotion to superintendent In 1976, the RRE merged with several other research institutions into a renamed Royal Signals and Radar Establishment. In 1980, Bond was promoted to Superintendent of Computing and Software Research there. As part of her role, Bond collaborated with the Open Software Foundation on an international open technical standard for Unix operating systems, named the Architecture Neutral Distribution Format, and on computing policy for the UK Ministry of Defense.

Bond retired from work in 1993.

Personal life Bond met her husband, Chris Sennett, while working at the RRE.