Lois Haibt facts for kids

Lois B. Mitchell Haibt (born 1934) is a famous American computer scientist. She is best known for being part of a small team at IBM. This team created FORTRAN, which was the very first successful high-level programming language. Lois Haibt is seen as a true pioneer in the world of computers.

Education and Early Career

Lois Haibt studied mathematics at Vassar College. She received a special scholarship to help pay for her studies. In 1955, she earned her bachelor's degree. During her summers while at Vassar, Lois also worked at Bell Laboratories.

Right after college, Lois started working at IBM. Her starting salary was $5,100 a year. This was a lot of money back then, almost double what she would have made at Bell Laboratories. Lois guessed that a job with such a high salary would be challenging but also very interesting.

The FORTRAN Team

Lois joined a team of ten young people at IBM. They all had different college degrees and skills. Some knew about crystallography, and others about cryptography. But they all shared one thing: they were good at math. Lois Haibt was the only woman on this special team.

Lois said that the team worked very well together. Everyone was happy to learn and share their ideas. They were not worried about making mistakes. The FORTRAN team often worked at unusual hours. This was so they could have full access to the IBM 704 computer. They even rented rooms at a nearby hotel to sleep during the day. This allowed them to work on the computer all night!

In 1957, Lois Haibt also studied at Columbia University. She is a member of the Mathematical Association of America.

Creating FORTRAN

The IBM team spent almost three years building the FORTRAN programming language. This new language completely changed how people gave instructions to computers. It made computers much easier to use.

Lois's Contributions

Lois Haibt was in charge of a very important part of the FORTRAN project. She looked at how different parts of the computer program would run. She figured out how often certain parts of the program would be used. To do this, she used a special method called Monte Carlo methods, which involves using statistics.

Through her work, Lois also created the first ever way to analyze how arithmetic expressions were put together in a program. This is called a syntactic analyzer. Lois planned and programmed this entire section herself.

In 1956, Lois was also part of a team that wrote the first guide for FORTRAN. This guide helped other people learn how to use the new language.

Personal Life

Lois Haibt was married to Luther Haibt. He was also a systems analyst at IBM. They lived in New York state for most of their lives.

Lois's daughter, Carolyn, also became very smart. She went to Princeton University and earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lois enjoys decorating her home and reading books in her free time.

Works

• Original Paper on FORTRAN from 1957
• Casting Petri Nets into Programs, September 1983

See also

In Spanish: Lois Haibt para niños

• List of prominent pioneers in computer science