Contents
Jean E. Sammet
Helping develop COBOL and leading the creation of FORMAC for symbolic mathematics.
COBOL · FORMAC
- Born
- 23 March 1928
- Birthplace
- New York City, United States
- Died
- 20 May 2017
More people
Jean E. Sammet
American programmer and historian of programming languages. She helped make computers useful for business and algebra, then documented the fast-growing range of languages used to program them.
Early life
Mathematical ambition
Could not attend the then boys-only Bronx High School of Science and attended Julia Richman High School instead.
Higher education
Earned mathematics degrees at Mount Holyoke in 1948 and Illinois in 1949.
Career
- 1955
Programming at Sperry
Began digital programming and supervised a scientific programming group.
- 1958–1961
Sylvania
Managed software work for the MOBIDIC computer and joined the COBOL design effort.
- 1961
IBM
Joined the company and directed work on FORMAC.
- 1974–1976
ACM president
Became the first woman to lead the Association for Computing Machinery.
Projects & writing
COBOL
Helped design the widely adopted language for business computing.
FORMAC
Led a language for manipulating mathematical expressions rather than only calculating numbers.
Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals
Surveyed the development and features of programming languages.
Beyond work
Teaching programmers
Taught early graduate programming courses at Adelphi before textbooks and equipment were widely available.
Preserving history
Organized and documented programming-language history alongside her technical work.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Institutional biography and research ↗Photo: Ben Shneiderman. CC BY-SA 4.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
