Computing Pioneer and Transgender Advocate
She was hired for brilliance but then fired for sexual identity. But she learned to cope with her personal and professional challenges, eventually credited with breakthrough designs for computer chips and supercomputers.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Lynn Conway (LC) was born – assigned gender identification as ‘male’ – in Mount Vernon, New York. Her father was a chemical engineer for an oil / gasoline production company. Her mother taught kindergarten. LC was the eldest of two children. Their parents divorced when LC was 7.
CHILDHOOD – EARLY TRANS REALIZATION
“Although I was born and raised as a boy,” LC posted online many years later, “all during my childhood years I felt like, and desperately wanted to be, a girl.”
LC’s math and science talents were quickly apparent. At 16, she built a reflecting telescope with a six-inch mirror.
EDUCATION – PART ONE
As a student at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), LC injected herself with estrogen and dressed as a woman when off-campus. But the contradictions of her outwardly secret, double life caused intense stress; her grades fell and she dropped out of M.I.T.
EDUCATION – PART TWO
After teaching herself to cope with her self-imposed stress, LC enrolled in a different school – Columbia University in New York City – where she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in electrical engineering.
FIRST JOB ALONG HER CAREER PATH
LC’s first adult job following completion of her graduate degrees was working at IBM’s research center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., where she was assigned to the secretive “Project Y,” which was designing the world’s fastest supercomputer. When the project engineers relocated to Menlo Park, California, LC – still publicly a male – moved with them to what would soon become the global hub of technology known as ‘Silicon Valley.’
LC’s innovations in her field of computer science were not immediately recognized because designing the guts of a computer is unsung work. But her contributions paved the way for personal computers and cellphones and bolstered national defense.
TRANSGENDER STRESS
When LC moved to California, she was still publicly a male, married to a female nurse. The traditional-appearing couple had two daughters, but LC noted later, “The marriage itself was an illusion” as she had lost none of the overwhelming conviction that she was then inhabiting the wrong body. Severely depressed, LC once put a loaded pistol to her head but fortunately lacked the courage to pull the trigger.
About this time (mid-1960s), LC learned about the pioneering hormonal and surgical procedures that a tiny group of doctors were performing. She told her (female) spouse of her desire to transition, which broke up their marriage. She was barred from contact with her children for many years by their mother, her former spouse.
Long after LC had left IBM, a researcher exploring the work of IBM in the 1960s came across LC’s contributions to computer design. She had developed a way to program a computer to perform multiple operations at once, cutting down on processing time. Known as ‘dynamic instruction scheduling,’ the technology became incorporated in many superfast computers.
CHALLENGE – BUSINESS AND PERSONAL REJECTIONS
When IBM management learned that LC was transitioning from male to female, she was immediately fired. At the same time, as LC would never forget, “all my family, relatives, friends and many colleagues simultaneously lost confidence in me. They became ashamed being seen with me and very embarrassed about what I was doing. None of them would have anything to do with me after that.”
Now that her secret was out – fortunately for her, only to a small group of personal acquaintances and to only IBM in the technology business world – LC took the next logical step by being among the earliest Americans to undergo transition surgery.
CAREER RESTART
Seeking computer science work post-transition, LC was rejected for jobs once she disclosed her transgender history. Nor did she feel she could mention her work for IBM. “I had to start all over pretty much from scratch technically and prove myself all over again.”
(Editor’s note – The news article upon which this career story is based made no mention of how – or whether – LC dealt with her employment years at IBM when applying for new jobs in technology. It is doubtful that she made up ‘fake news’ employment within her resume, which could have been checked and found false. So how she explained her work at IBM to her new employer – and whether any prospective new employer bothered to ask – remains unknown to this editor. Suffice to say that it was good news for LC and for the world of computer science and its users, that LC eventually found employment away from IBM.)
LC finally found work as a contract programmer, which soon led to a better position at the Memorex Corporation known for its recording tape. Later, with that recent, successful experience on her professional resume, LC was hired by Xerox to work at their new Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a hub of brain power and innovation which famously gave birth to the personal computer, the point-and-click user interface and the Ethernet protocol.
LC’s breakthrough in designing complex computer chips was codified in a 1979 textbook, “Introduction to VLS1 Systems,” which became a standard handbook for waves of computer science students and engineers.
(VLS1 refers to very large-scale integrated design.)
Within a few years, LC was recruited to lead a supercomputer program at the U.S. Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”). The fact that she passed her security clearance reassured her that being transgender was becoming less stigmatized.
LC went on to accept positions as a professor and associate dean in the engineering school at the University of Michigan.
CAREER SATISFACTION
After her retirement, LC was elected to the Electronic Design Hall of Game and the National Academy of Engineering, which cited her “foundational contributions” to the development of supercomputers at IBM and her creation, at Xerox PARC, of a new way to design computer chips – thereby launching a worldwide revolution.”
A Michigan professor of computer science noted that “My field would not exist without Lynn Conway. Chips used to be designed by drawing them with paper and pencil like an architect’s blueprints in the predigital era. Conway’s work developed algorithms that enabled our field to use software to arrange millions, and later billions, of transistors on a chip.”
In retirement, LC became an elder stateswoman of the transgender community. She emailed and spoke with many who were transitioning, shared information on gender surgeries and advocated transgender acceptance. She also campaigned against psychotherapists who sought to define transgenderism as a pathology.
On her website, LC reflected on the increasing, if imperfect, acceptance of transgender people after she had hidden her transition. “Fortunately, those dark days are receded. Nowadays many tens of thousands of transitioners have not only moved on into happy and fulfilling lives, but are also open and proud about their life accomplishments.
Oh, and one more important postscript (“p.s.”) to the life of LC: About 50 years after being fired by IBM for being transgender, IBM offered its formal apology to her, in a ceremony that 1,200 IBM employees watched virtually. An IBM vice president added, “LC was probably our very first employee to come out. And for that, we deeply regret what you went through – and I know I speak for all of us.”
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This career story was based on an obituary written by Trip Gabriel, published by the New York Times on June 18, 2024 plus internet research including Wikipedia.
