Lynn Conway

Lynn was born a boy in 1938, but she knew deep down inside that she was a girl. Her gender dysphoria (the uncomfortable feeling of one’s gender identity not matching their assigned gender) meant that she failed to graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but she completed her education at Columbia University where she earned her bachelor’s degree and Master of Science in Engineering.

Lynn worked for IBM and her work has impacted microchip design and computing globally, all while she was about to transition. Unfortunately, her boss didn’t want a trans girl in his company so he had Lynn sacked but that didn’t stop her as she worked her way back up after transitioning from the bottom to the top (Bun go Barr if you will (Bun go Barr being Irish for from bottom to the top)). However, she did this rebuilt while keeping her trans identity a secret (society was anti-trans back then). Oh, and her former employers apologised for their discrimative actions in 2020 but by that point, her work at Xerox PARC saw the introduction of VSLI systems which she co-authored with Carter Mead. These systems combined with her IBM work completely revolutionised the electronic industry. A lot of our mobile devices like phones and tablets owe Mrs. Conway a major “THANK YOU!” since VSLI enabled the production of integrated circuits with millions of transistors on a single chip. This advancement not only made the production of mobile phones easier which led to those who weren’t big cheeses (rich people) being able to afford one but also microprocessors, memory devices, GPUs that allow us to play our video games, actuators and sensors that allow us to build robots and much more! She also invented dynamic instruction scheduling (DIS) which made computers run faster than they had been capable of at that point.

It was in 1998, when Lynn was a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan and, simultaneously, Associate Dean of Engineering, when the public found out about her gender identity. This was when an investigator investigating IBM's thirty-year-old supercomputer project found that a scientist he had failed to recognize had come to be known as Lynn Conway. This time, Lynn was praised and wasn’t excluded. She even got to have her pension too! Her final years were spent with her second hubby Charles Rogers in Michigan on a 24-acre wooded property.