Tanya McGinnity

In celebration of Ada Lovelace Day, I’ve decided to write about Beatrice Helen Worsley. Beatrice is considered to be “Canada’s Female Computer Pioneer” as she was one of the first women to earn a doctorate in Computer Science in 1951.

Beatrice was born in Mexico in 1922 and went on to attend the Bishop Strachan School in Toronto, and then to graduate in 1944 with first class honors in Math and Physics from the University of Toronto. Throughout wartime, she worked with the Royal Canadian Navy to design torpedoes complete with small computing devices and then went on to receive a S.M. in Math from MIT in 1947.

She went on to develop a programming system known as Transcode and continued to study at Cambridge where in 1952, she received her Ph.D and became one of the first women to receive a doctorate in computing. Beatrice worked at the University of Toronto as an associate professor for several years and then transferred to Queen’s University where she helped found the Queen’s Computing Centre.

In her final years of life, she took a sabbatical from her work at the University of Waterloo’s Department of Applied Analysis and Computer Science to work on assembler language design related to the logical structure of computers.

Throughout her career she published roughly 17 papers in various professional journals as well as many which appeared in the Quarterly bulletin of the Computing and Data Processing Society of Canada.

Beatrice passed away from a heart attack on May 8th, 1972 at the young age of 52.  The year before her passing, she donated many of her research papers to the Smithsonian Institute.

Photo by Jan Tik http://www.flickr.com/photos/jantik/477005319/

I was recently reading Rue Morgue magazine (one of my favourites) and was struck by the dedicated community that surrounds the rabid group of horror fans that follow the genre. The magazine has a great thing going for it and knows fully that its success depends on the participation of its readers.

By following their Twitter feed and listening to their podcast, I’m engaged with their magazine (and the wild cast of writers, artists and fans) long after I’ve stopped flipping though the glossy print pages chock full of gore and creepiness.

A few weeks ago,I watched a program on the Space Network called ‘Pretty Bloody‘ about women in the horror industry. The editor of Rue Morgue, tattooed hell-goddess  Jovanka Vuckovic spoke quite a bit about the close-knit community of hardcore female fans that, although are small in number, are active and supportive of one another.

Over the weekend I finished reading tattoo artist Kat Von D’s book “High Voltage Tattoo” where, rather than write an entire book on herself, she shared the spotlight with others within the tattoo, art and music realm and gave them mention for helping to inspire her along the way. The book is gorgeous and features photos of the tattoos she worked on from those on her friends, family and rock stars to those of her clients.

What I appreciate so much about these two ladies is their commitment to bringing a sense of community and respect for others as well as their desire to inspire others. By sharing the spotlight with others has helped them to shine even brighter in my eyes.