Lynn Conway facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lynn Conway
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Conway in 2006
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| Born | January 2, 1938 Mount Vernon, New York, U.S.
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| Died | June 9, 2024 (aged 86) Jackson, Michigan, U.S.
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| Alma mater | Columbia University |
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Charles Rogers
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| Scientific career | |
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| Institutions | IBM Advanced Computing Systems (1964–68), Memorex, Xerox PARC (1970s), DARPA, University of Michigan |
Lynn Ann Conway (January 2, 1938 – June 9, 2024) was an American computer scientist, electrical engineer and transgender activist.
She worked at IBM in the 1960s and invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance. She initiated the Mead–Conway VLSI chip design revolution in very large scale integrated (VLSI) microchip design. That revolution spread rapidly through the research universities and computing industries during the 1980s, incubating an emerging electronic design automation industry, spawning the modern 'foundry' infrastructure for chip design and production, and triggering a rush of impactful high-tech startups in the 1980s and 1990s.
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Early life and education
Conway was brought up in the role of a boy, in White Plains, New York. Conway was shy and experienced gender dysphoria as a child. She became fascinated by astronomy (building a 6-inch (150 mm) reflector telescope one summer) and did well in math and science in high school. Conway entered MIT in 1955, earning high grades but ultimately leaving in 1958. After working as an electronics technician for several years, Conway resumed education at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, earning B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963.
Early research at IBM
Conway was recruited by IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1964, and was soon selected to join the architecture team designing an advanced supercomputer, working alongside John Cocke, Brian Randell, Herbert Schorr, Ed Sussenguth, Fran Allen and other IBM researchers on the Advanced Computing Systems (ACS) project, inventing multiple-issue out-of-order dynamic instruction scheduling while working there. The Computer History Museum has stated that "the ACS machines appears to have been the first superscalar design, a computer architectural paradigm widely exploited in modern high-performance microprocessors."
Career as computer scientist
In 1968, Conway took a new name and identity, and restarted her career in what she called "stealth-mode" as a contract programmer at Computer Applications, Inc. She went on to work at Memorex during 1969–1972 as a digital system designer and computer architect.
Conway joined Xerox PARC in 1973, where she led the "LSI Systems" group under Bert Sutherland. When in PARC, Conway founded the "multiproject wafers" (MPW). This new technology made it possible to pack multiple circuit designs from various sources into one single silicon wafer. Her new invention increased production and decreased costs. Collaborating with Ivan Sutherland and Carver Mead of Caltech on VLSI design methodology, she co-authored Introduction to VLSI Systems, a groundbreaking work that would soon become a standard textbook in chip design, used in nearly 120 universities by 1983. With over 70,000 copies sold, and the new integration of her MPC79/MOSIS innovations, the Mead and Conway revolution became part of VLSI design.
In 1978, Conway served as visiting associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, teaching a now famous VLSI design course based on a draft of the Mead–Conway text. The course validated the new design methods and textbook, and established the syllabus and instructor's guidebook used in later courses worldwide.
Among Conway's contributions were the invention of dimensionless, scalable design rules that greatly simplified chip design and design tools, and invention of a new form of internet-based infrastructure for rapid prototyping and short-run fabrication of large numbers of chip designs. The problem they were solving was how to cope with the increasing complexity of chip design while the number of transistors per chip doubled every two years as Gordon Moore (chairman of Intel) had predicted in 1965. The design methods in use in the semiconductor industry were rapidly running out of steam. The new infrastructure was institutionalized as the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service (MOSIS) system in 1981. Two years into its success, Mead and Conway received Electronics magazine's annual award of achievement. Since then, MOSIS has fabricated more than 50,000 circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and research and educational institutions around the world. VLSI researcher Charles Seitz commented that "MOSIS represented the first period since the pioneering work of Eckert and Mauchley on the ENIAC in the late 1940s that universities and small companies had access to state-of-the-art digital technology."
The research methods used to develop the Mead–Conway VLSI design methodology and the MOSIS prototype are documented in a 1981 Xerox report and the Euromicro Journal. The impact of the Mead–Conway work is described in a number of historical overviews of computing. Conway and her colleagues have compiled an online archive of original papers that documents much of that work. The methods also came under ethnographic study in 1980 by PARC anthropologist Lucy Suchman, who published her interviews with Conway in 2021.
In the early 1980s, Conway left Xerox to join DARPA, where she was a key architect of the Defense Department's Strategic Computing Initiative, a research program studying high-performance computing, autonomous systems technology, and intelligent weapons technology.
In a USA Today article about Conway's joining DARPA, Mark Stefik, a Xerox scientist who worked with her, said "Lynn would like to live five lives in the course of one life" and that she's "charismatic and very energetic". Douglas Fairbairn, a former Xerox associate, said "She figures out a way so that everybody wins."
Conway joined the University of Michigan in 1985 as professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and associate dean of engineering. There she worked on "visual communications and control probing for basic system and user-interface concepts as applicable to hybridized internet/broadband-cable communications". She retired from active teaching and research in 1998, as professor emerita at Michigan.
Personal life and death
While struggling with life in a male role, Conway had been married to a woman and had two children.
In 1987, Conway met her husband Charles "Charlie" Rogers, a professional engineer who shares her interest in the outdoors, including whitewater canoeing and motocross racing. They soon started living together, and bought a house with 24 acres (9.7 ha) of meadow, marsh, and woodland in rural Michigan in 1994. On August 13, 2002, they were married.
Conway died on June 9, 2024, at her home in Jackson, Michigan, from a heart condition.
Awards and honors
Conway has received a number of awards and distinctions:
- Electronics 1981 Award for Achievement, with Carver Mead
- Harold Pender Award of the Moore School, University of Pennsylvania, with Carver Mead, 1984
- IEEE EAB Major Educational Innovation Award, 1984
- Fellow of the IEEE, 1985, "for contributions to VLSI technology"
- John Price Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, with Carver Mead, 1985
- Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Award, May 1985
- Member of the National Academy of Engineering, 1989
- National Achievement Award, Society of Women Engineers, 1990
- Presidential Appointment to the United States Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, 1996
- Honorary Doctorate, Trinity College, 1998
- Electronic Design Hall of Fame, 2002
- Engineer of the Year, National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, 2005
- Named one of the "Stonewall 40 trans heroes" by the Imperial Court System and the National LGBTQ Task Force, 2009.
- Computer Pioneer Award, IEEE Computer Society, 2009
- Member of the Corporation, Emerita, The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, 1993–2010
- Fellow Award, Computer History Museum, 2014, "For her work in developing and disseminating new methods of integrated circuit design."
- Honorary Doctorate, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2014
- Steinmetz Memorial Lecture, (Invitational), IEEE/Union College, 2015.
- IEEE/RSE James Clerk Maxwell Medal, 2015
- Magill Lecture in Science, Technology and the Arts (Invited), Columbia University, 2016
- Honorary Doctorate, University of Victoria, 2016
- Fellow Award, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2016
- Honorary Doctorate and Commencement Address, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2018
- Pioneer in Tech Award, National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT), 2019
- Lifetime Achievement Award, IBM Corporation, 2020
- Induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF), 2023
- Honorary Doctorate, Princeton University, 2023.
- Honorary Doctor of Science, Syracuse University, 2024
See also
In Spanish: Lynn Conway para niños
