In 2012 NCWIT created the NCWIT Pioneer Award to recognize individuals whose lifetime contributions have changed the way we think about women's participation in the history of computing and technology.  

The 2013 winner of the NCWIT Pioneer Award is Jean E. Sammet, an ACM Fellow and retired computer scientist who's well-known for her work on FORMAC. Jean will be honored at the 2013 NCWIT Summit on Women and IT with her award and a scrapbook of commemorative artwork, created by recipients of the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. 

Jean Sammet

Jean E. Sammet is a retied computer scientist and programmer who is best-known for her work on FORMAC, the first widely used general language and system for manipulating nonnumeric algebraic expressions. Sammet supervised the first scientific programming group for Sperry Gyroscope Co. (1955-1958). She worked at Sylvania Electric Products (1958-1961) in various positions and while there she served as a key member of the original COBOL committee.

Sammet is the author of “PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: History and Fundamentals,” which became a standard book on its topic, and was called an “instant computer classic” when published in 1969. She was very active in ACM and held many positions including President, Vice-President, Editor-in-Chief of Computing Reviews, General and/or Program Chair for the first two SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conferences (HOPL) in 1978 and 1993. She organized the AFIPS History of Computing Committee, and helped start the Annals of the History of Computing.

She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1977), and among other awards received the ACM Distinguished Service Award (1985), Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing (1989). She is a Fellow of ACM (1994) and the Computer History Museum (2001).

Sammet has a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. from the University of Illinois, both in Mathematics. She received an honorary D.Sc. from Mount Holyoke in 1978.

2012 NCWIT Pioneer Award Winners

The 2012 winners of the NCWIT Pioneer Award are Patricia Palombo and Lucy Simon Rakov, mathematicians who worked on NASA's Project Mercury at a time when computing was in its infancy.  

Patricia Palombo

Patricia Palombo completed her undergraduate career at Barnard College, where she was one of two math majors in her class. Following her graduation she was recruited by IBM. Ms. Palombo later  became a member of the team assigned to work on Project Mercury, based out of the Goddard Space Flight Center. On Project Mercury she contributed to the re-entry phase of the first American staffed space flights. 

For the purposes of this project, Ms. Palombo was responsible for writing the FORTRAN program that was actually used in controlling the spacecraft. Following the completion of this program, Ms. Palombo spent months simulating the mission and testing the software. The successful completion of this program has been her greatest professional achievement.

Ms. Palombo earned her Master’s degree in piano. After her retirement from IBM, she went on to work with non-profit music organizations, promoting the use of information technology for more efficient planning. She now runs a music studio in her home, where she teaches piano and music theory.

Lucy Simon Rakov

Lucy Simon Rakov has more than fifty years of operational experience and technical expertise in computer science and mathematics.   Her career began at IBM as a member of the NASA Project Mercury Space Computing team. This team of 100 mathematicians (of whom 10 were women) created the first realtime computer system. This Mercury tracking system imported live radar data and astronaut medical data into the mathematical orbit computations program.  The results generated the Mercury capsule flight pattern and critical reports on the astronaut.  Later Lucy worked for IBM on a differential orbit correction program for the NASA Apollo project, worked on the ANNA satellite data for mapping, and on an integration orbital program for NASA.