Anita Borg

Anita Borg Naffz ( born January 17, 1949 in Chicago, Illinois; † 6 April 2003 in Sonoma, California ) was an American computer scientist and women's rights activist. She is best known as a pioneer of cyberfeminism.

Biography

Anita Borg Naffz grew up in different cities in the U.S. to only came in their late 20s to computer science and doctorate in 1981 at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York. As a researcher, she worked for several large U.S. companies. In 1987 it fell to a conference, how few women there were there. This gave her the impetus to found Systers, a mailing list for women in computer science - so they laid the foundation for the later so-called cyber feminism.

In 1994 Anita Borg together with others interested in the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (named after Grace Hopper, the first female admiral in the U.S. Navy and the inventor of the COBOL programming language ). This conference is now the world's largest event for computer specialists.

In 1997, she left the industry in order to establish the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT ). Two years later, President Bill Clinton called her, she was later founded by him in the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology also worked for the National Research Council 's Committee on Women in Science and Engineering. She was honored in 2002 with the Heinz Award for Technology.

Anita Borg was convinced that modern technologies are affecting the whole of life: economics, politics, social affairs and daily life of the people. She tirelessly fought for it, that this influence has the most positive impact on people. She died at the age of 54 from a brain tumor.