Jean E. Sammet facts for kids

Jean E. Sammet (March 23, 1928 – May 20, 2017) was an amazing American computer scientist. She created the FORMAC programming language in 1962. She also helped develop the very important COBOL programming language.

Jean Sammet earned her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in Mathematics from Mount Holyoke College in 1948. She then received her Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in Mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949. Mount Holyoke College later gave her an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree in 1978.

Sammet worked at Sperry Gyroscope from 1955 to 1958. There, she led the first group focused on scientific computer programming. From 1958 to 1961, she was a consultant for programming research at Sylvania Electric Products. She was also part of the original team that created COBOL. In 1961, she joined IBM. At IBM, she developed FORMAC. This was the first widely used computer language for working with mathematical formulas using symbols. She also explored using simple English as a programming language. Later, she managed programming technology for IBM's Federal Systems Division.

Sammet founded a special group called SICSAM in 1965. This group focused on symbolic and algebraic manipulation in computing. She was also the first female president of the ACM, serving from 1974 to 1976.

Jean Sammet's Early Life and Education

Jean E. Sammet was born on March 23, 1928, in New York City. Her parents, Harry and Ruth Sammet, were both lawyers. Jean and her sister Helen went to public elementary schools in Manhattan.

Jean loved mathematics. She wanted to attend the Bronx High School of Science, a famous school for science and math. However, at that time, the school did not accept girls. So, Sammet went to Julia Richman High School instead.

Sammet chose to attend Mount Holyoke College because it had a strong mathematics program. She majored in math and also took education courses. This allowed her to become a certified high school math teacher in New York. She also studied political science.

After graduating from Mount Holyoke, Sammet continued her studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Master's degree in 1949. From 1948 to 1951, she was a teaching assistant in the math department while working towards her Ph.D. When Sammet first saw a computer in 1949, she wasn't very impressed!

In 1951, Sammet looked for a teaching job. New York City was not hiring new teachers, so she looked in New Jersey. However, New Jersey authorities said she needed two more courses to teach there. Sammet disagreed, saying that knowing New Jersey history wouldn't help her teach math. This led her to look for other types of jobs.

Sammet's Amazing Career in Computing

In 1951, Jean Sammet started working at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. She was a trainee actuary, learning about punched card accounting machines. She enjoyed working with these electronic machines. But after her training, she couldn't work directly with them. So, she left and enrolled at Columbia University to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics. She also worked as a teaching assistant at Barnard College for a year. However, she soon realized that a life in academics wasn't for her.

From 1953 to 1958, Sammet worked as a mathematician for Sperry Gyroscope in New York. She solved mathematical problems for clients and operated an analog computer. She even worked on the U.S. Navy's submarine program.

In January 1955, Sammet became a computer programmer. Sperry Gyroscope was building a digital computer called the Sperry Electronic Digital Automatic Computer (SPEEDAC). They asked Sammet to be its programmer. Her first task was to write the basic loader for SPEEDAC. This was a short 20-line program. It took her three days to manually enter it into the computer using binary code!

As Sperry hired more programmers, Sammet became the leader of an "open shop." This meant programmers acted as consultants, helping engineers and scientists write and test their computer programs. Her group created software for scientific and engineering calculations. In 1955, Sperry Gyroscope merged with Remington Rand to form Sperry Rand. This merger gave Sammet access to the UNIVAC I computer and the famous computer pioneer Grace Hopper.

In 1956, Sammet taught one of the first graduate-level computer programming courses. She taught at Adelphi College (now University) on Long Island. Even though Adelphi didn't have a computer and there were few programming textbooks, Sammet taught these courses for two years.

Sammet wanted to work for a company that focused mainly on computers. She found an engineering position at Sylvania Electric Products in Needham, Massachusetts. She was hired to manage software development for the MOBIDIC project.

In 1959, Sammet and five other programmers played a key role in designing the influential COBOL programming language. They wrote a proposal in just two weeks, which was accepted by Sylvania's government clients.

In 1969, Sammet published her important book, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals. This book described 120 different programming languages being used in the United States during the late 1960s.

Jean Sammet's Leadership in Computing Organizations

Around 1965 or 1966, while working on FORMAC, Sammet realized the need for computer professionals to share ideas. She had been a member of the ACM for years but became more active. She wanted to start a special interest group to connect with others in her field. After some effort, she contacted George Forsythe, the president of ACM. He appointed her as Chairperson of the Special Interest Committee on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation (SICSAM).

To get people interested in SICSAM, Sammet wrote letters to professionals she knew from publications and the field. She found people at Bell Labs, Carnegie Mellon, and IBM. Sammet faced some challenges from another ACM group focused on numerical analysis. About five years after SICSAM started, there was a conference called SIGNUM about mathematical software. Sammet had to work hard to present a paper there because the group wasn't interested in her kind of non-numerical analysis. With help from others interested in SICSAM, Sammet organized a conference in March 1966, called the Symposium on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation (SYMSAM).

In June 1966, Sammet was elected the Northeast Regional Representative for ACM. She was also a member of the ACM Council and an ACM lecturer. In August 1968, she became the chairperson of the ACM Committee on Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and Special Interest Committees (SICs).

In 1971, she was elected chair of SIGPLAN, a group focused on programming languages. She served for one year before resigning because she was elected vice president of ACM in 1972. As SIGPLAN chairperson, she organized conferences between SIGPLAN and other special interest groups. She believed these conferences were important because programming languages are fundamental to many parts of computing.

Sammet served as vice president of ACM from June 1972 to June 1974. Working with ACM president Tony Ralston, Sammet made the organization's finances a top priority. At the time, ACM was almost bankrupt. Sammet convinced Ralston to hold a forum for members before their annual conference. She believed ACM needed better ways to communicate with its members.

Later Life and Legacy

Jean Sammet passed away on May 20, 2017, in Silver Spring, Maryland, after a short illness. Her contributions to computer science and programming languages left a lasting impact.

Selected Works

• Detailed Description of COBOL, 1960

Awards and Honors

• 1975: Inducted as an Honorary Member of UPE (the International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Sciences).
• 1989: Ada Lovelace Award Recipient, from the Association for Women in Computing.
• 1994: Became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
• 1997: Received the SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award.
• 2001: Became a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for her work in programming languages and their history.
• 2009: Received the Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society.
• 2013: Received the NCWIT Pioneer Award.

See also

In Spanish: Jean E. Sammet para niños