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Lynn Conway has died
- electriclove 2y agoWhy does Wikipedia not list the first spouse or children?
- amysox 2y agoNo confirmed sources. This was discussed on the talk page.
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- mattigames 2y ago[flagged]
- OtherShrezzing 2y agoWikipedia has a reference manual which describes this scenario[1]. Lynn was prominently and publicly known for her post-transition work - though her IBM achievements are included, they are the minority of her career's work. She wasn't in the public eye at the time, so her former name is considered a privacy interest & not eligible for publishing to Wikipedia. If a person is notable & in the public eye before transitioning, their former names are then eligible to be listed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Gender_identity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Gend...
- mattigames 2y agoFascinating, thank you for providing a logical explanation rather than just downvoting.
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- xereeto 2y agolittle matter called respect
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- steveklabnik 2y agoIs there a citation for this, or an announcement somewhere? The Wikipedia page was changed, but with no link backing it up, and I can't find any. EDIT: ah, found it: http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/wordPressNEW/2024/06/11/lynn-conway-january-2-1938-june-9-2024/ http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/wordPressNEW/2024/06/11/lynn-c... RIP.
- neonate 2y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20240611172823/http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/wordPressNEW/2024/06/11/lynn-conway-january-2-1938-june-9-2024/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240611172823/http://www.myhusb...
- canucker2016 2y agoWikipedia has updated to use the following U.Mich announcement: https://news.engin.umich.edu/2024/06/the-legacy-of-lynn-conway-chip-design-pioneer-and-transgender-rights-advocate/ https://news.engin.umich.edu/2024/06/the-legacy-of-lynn-conw...
- amysox 2y agoThere's also now an article from the Los Angeles Times via Yahoo News: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/lynn-conway-leading-computer-scientist-013840387.html https://www.yahoo.com/tech/lynn-conway-leading-computer-scie...
- DonHopkins 2y agoLynn Conway co-wrote "the book" on VLSI design, "Introduction to VLSI Systems", created and taught this historic VLSI Design Course in 1978, which was the first time students designed and fabricated their own integrated circuits, including James Clark (SGI) who made the Geometry Engine, and Guy L Steel (MIT) who made the Scheme Microprocessor. She invented superscalar architecture at IBM, just to be fired in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition, then 52 years later IBM formally apologized to her in 2020. She successfully rebooted her life, invented and taught VLSI design to industry pioneers who founded many successful companies based on the design methodology she invented, wrote the book on, and personally taught to them, and then she became a trans activist who helped many people transition, find each other, and avoid suicide, fight abuse and bigotry, and find acceptance, by telling her story and building an online community. Lynn Conway receives 2009 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4Txvjia3p0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4Txvjia3p0
- pclmulqdq 2y agoI ended up teaching Carver Mead's course in its last year at Caltech, which was quite an experience. In many ways, the course was (and is) horribly out of date, and not just because of the fact that students were using open-source Berkeley tools to draw layouts. The real reason why this course was obsolete was that Mead and Conway so thoroughly won the argument on the idea of creating rigorous abstractions that people don't learn any other way. It just seems so obvious today that you can create gates, you can create macros, you can create complex designs, and you can define the interface at every level so you can hook them up and they just work. That idea came out of Conway and the early pioneers of VLSI. The same ideas are the core of how we work with libraries when doing software engineering, too.
- canucker2016 2y agoIn the book, Dealers of Lightning, by Michael Hiltzik, (about Xerox PARC), chapter 21, "The Silicon Revolution", details the work Lynn Conway, Carver Mead, and Doug Fairbairn did with VLSI at PARC. Excerpts - text in double parentheses provided for context: "Lynn Conway and I," Fairbairn remembered, "were the ones who said, 'This VLSI is hot shit.'" For the next year, Caltech and PARC educated each other. Mead transferred his theories about microelectronics and computer science, and Conway and Fairbairn paid him back by developing design methods and tools giving engineers the ability to create integrated circuits of unprecedented complexity on Alto-sized workstations. ...If the computer lab -- particularly ((Butler)) Lampson, who commanded management's respect -- continued to carp at the money being spent on the hazy potential of VLSI, who knew how long she could survive at PARC?... While discussing this one day with Mead and Fairbairn she realized the problem was not just scientific, but cultural. VLSI had not been around long enough even to generate textbooks and college courses -- the paraphernalia of sound science that, she was convinced, would force everyone else to take it seriously. "We should write the book," she told Mead. "A book that communicates the simplest, most elegant rules and methods for VLSI design would make it look like a mature, proven science, like anything does if it's been around for the ten or fifteen years you normally have behind a textbook." Mead was skeptical... That's where you're wrong, she replied. What was the aim of all the technology that surrounded them at PARC, if not to facilitate just the project she was proposing? They had Altos ((computer workstations)) running Bravo ((word processor)), a network to link long-distance collaborators, and high-speed laser-driven Dover printers to produce professional-looking manuscripts. Their collaboration that summer on what became the seminal text of the new technology was only one of Conway's efforts to distill and spread the VLSI gospel. The same year she agreed to teach a guest course at MIT (using the first few chapters of the still-maturing textbook), then printed up her lecture notes for instructors at an ever-enlarging circle of interested universities. By mid-1979 she was able to offer an additional incentive to a dozen schools: If they would transmit student designs to PARC over the ARPANET, PARC would arrange to have the chips built, packaged, and returned to the students for testing. ((Jim)) Clark understood at once that the computing efficiency VLSI offered was the key to expanding the potential of computer graphics. That summer he essentially relocated to PARC, taking over a vacant office next door to Conway's and steeping himself in VLSI lore. Within four months he had finished the Geometry Engine chip, the product of that summer's total immersion.
- DonHopkins 2y agoLynn Conway, co-author along with Carver Mead of "the textbook" on VLSI design, "Introduction to VLSI Systems", created and taught this historic VLSI Design Course in 1978, which was the first time students designed and fabricated their own integrated circuits: >"Importantly, these weren’t just any designs, for many pushed the envelope of system architecture. Jim Clark, for instance, prototyped the Geometry Engine and went on to launch Silicon Graphics Incorporated based on that work (see Fig. 16). Guy Steele, Gerry Sussman, Jack Holloway and Alan Bell created the follow-on ‘Scheme’ (a dialect of LISP) microprocessor, another stunning design." Many more links and beautiful illustrations of her student's VLSI designs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31758139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31758139 Also, Jim Clark (SGI, Netscape) was one of Lynn Conway's students, and she taught him how to make his first prototype "Geometry Engine"! http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/MPCAdv/MPCAdv.html http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/MPCAdv/MPCAdv.ht... Just 29 days after the design deadline time at the end of the courses, packaged custom wire-bonded chips were shipped back to all the MPC79 designers. Many of these worked as planned, and the overall activity was a great success. I'll now project photos of several interesting MPC79 projects. First is one of the multiproject chips produced by students and faculty researchers at Stanford University (Fig. 5). Among these is the first prototype of the "Geometry Engine", a high performance computer graphics image-generation system, designed by Jim Clark. That project has since evolved into a very interesting architectural exploration and development project.[9] Figure 5. Photo of MPC79 Die-Type BK (containing projects from Stanford University): http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/MPCAdv/SU-BK1.jpg http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/VLSI/MPCAdv/SU-BK1.jp... [...] The text itself passed through drafts, became a manuscript, went on to become a published text. Design environments evolved from primitive CIF editors and CIF plotting software on to include all sorts of advanced symbolic layout generators and analysis aids. Some new architectural paradigms have begun to similarly evolve. An example is the series of designs produced by the OM project here at Caltech. At MIT there has been the work on evolving the LISP microprocessors [3,10]. At Stanford, Jim Clark's prototype geometry engine, done as a project for MPC79, has gone on to become the basis of a very powerful graphics processing system architecture [9], involving a later iteration of his prototype plus new work by Marc Hannah on an image memory processor [20]. [...] For example, the early circuit extractor work done by Clark Baker [16] at MIT became very widely known because Clark made access to the program available to a number of people in the network community. From Clark's viewpoint, this further tested the program and validated the concepts involved. But Clark's use of the network made many, many people aware of what the concept was about. The extractor proved so useful that knowledge about it propagated very rapidly through the community. (Another factor may have been the clever and often bizarre error-messages that Clark's program generated when it found an error in a user's design!) 9. J. Clark, "A VLSI Geometry Processor for Graphics", Computer, Vol. 13, No. 7, July, 1980.
- minedwiz 2y agoIf this is verified, I think a black band is 100% warranted. As I understand it, she was a real innovator in VLSI, which I think we all agree is somewhat important :) EDIT: GG, the black band appeared as I sent this
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- metalliqaz 2y agoomg is that what that is? all this time I thought the CSS was screwed up on my browser. I had assumed it all my anti-ad/privacy plugins.
- DonHopkins 2y ago[flagged]
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- mattecypress 2y agoNot to be mistaken with John Conway, known for Conway’s game of life.
- reducesuffering 2y agoNor the Melvin Conway, of Conway's law.
- wincy 2y agoHonestly considering Lynn Conway’s Wikipedia profile mentions being a transgender activist and not knowing much about either of them, I thought maybe I’d just missed that John Conway had transitioned at some point, and had now died.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dexwiz 2y agoJohn Conway died over 4 years ago.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoYup. During the big initial wave of Covid. He was living in New Jersey at the time after retiring from a career at Princeton.
- someperson 2y agoIt really doesn't help that the Wikipedia page doesn't currently appear to state the former name anywhere, like it often does for other people (like celebrities) who legally change their names at some point in their lives.
- thedynamicduo 2y ago[flagged]
- nxobject 2y agoA woman of incredible courage - to be able to rebuild her career after being kicked out of IBM despite her achievements, is inspirational. And, given how even the implementation of superscalar processors confuses me, smarter than I’ll ever be for understanding that AND chip fabbing at the same time, one of humanity’s finest technical achievements.
- dyauspitr 2y ago[flagged]
- tills13 2y agoPardon my ignorance but don't trans people just want to be identified by their apparent gender without a qualifier?
- pseudalopex 2y ago> Pardon my ignorance but don't trans people just want to be identified by their apparent gender without a qualifier? Yes. And trans woman not transwoman when it matters.
- tills13 2y agook so just a bigoted comment that I replied to originally
- musicale 2y agoVLSI and processor design are, like most things in computing, things that you can learn if you have basic logical thinking skills and spend the requisite time. Mead and Conway's textbook unlocked VLSI design for generations of students. Now you can find videos on youtube, and you can even join tiny tapeout to get your chip design fabricated. And for processor design, you can design something in Verilog or VHDL and run it on an FPGA board. I also recently discovered Digital, a gate/component-level design tool and simulator for digital circuits (which can also export to Verilog for synthesis), that is similar to the older Logisim.
- mlsu 2y agoI recommend reading Lynn's story, written in her own words: https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html It is amazing, tragic, and triumphant in so many ways.
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- barbazoo 2y agoThanks for sharing! In case anyone knows, what's the best way to get this to be readable on an e-reader? Haven't found a PDF yet, probably exporting into a PDF is the easiest since it's only a couple dozen pages maybe?!
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- lye 2y agoSave as HTML with images and run through Calibre: $ ebook-convert index.html book.epub Here are the files if you trust a rando on the internet. Since they're just ZIP archives, you can unpack and inspect both to make sure there's no JS there. .mobi looks fine on my Kindle. https://0x0.st/Xc8M.epub https://0x0.st/Xc8M.epub https://0x0.st/Xc8B.mobi https://0x0.st/Xc8B.mobi
- barbazoo 2y ago> if you trust a rando on the internet Why did you say that, now I have to check the files :) Thank you
- ballooney 2y agoA comment when an upvote would do - this is the kind of small act of generosity that I wish to acknowledge and praise in prose - thank you for taking the couple of minutes to do this. I've been feeling a little bleak about the internet lately as the SNR plummets in the tidal wave of AI seo search results, AI comments, etc. Thank you for taking the trouble. I went to EMFCamp in the UK a couple of weeks ago and had a similar resurgence in enthusiasm about simple things like asking a question of someone and getting an above-and-beyond, going-out-of-their-way response to share their enthusiasm and knowledge about something with you. We must defend these pockets of human interaction. [brought to you after a boozy work lunch but the sentiment is genuine].
- kstrauser 2y agoWhat an absolute genius. RIP, Lynn.
- dekhn 2y agoI met her totally at random at a bio conference in hawaii- I sat down next to her at a bar and we started chatting. I asked what she did and she said VLSI- something I knew nothing about (I was a biologist). She was curious about biology and wanted to learn about how she could help. I looked her name up later and learned she really did work in VLSI :)
- divbzero 2y agoWhen did you meet her at this bio conference? I’m curious what aspect of biology she was interested in and whether she dove into the subject further.
- dekhn 2y agoprobably Pacific Symposium in Biocomputing around 2000 but I don't think Lynn ever published in the area. I don't recall the specific details of what we discussed, probably something about molecular dynamics.
- betimsl 2y agoGreat loss for our community.
- Upvoter33 2y agoGreat prof. Changed my entire career arc. RIP.
- meifun 2y agoThank you for the inspiration as I continue my gender transition. I appreciate your struggles and dedication to living a life that was "for you" and not for anyone else. RIP.
- startupsfail 2y ago[flagged]
- bo0tzz 2y agoWhat are you trying to say?
- adamomada 2y agoYou don’t live your life exclusively for you after you have kids, I think
- zdimension 2y agoMost would agree that a trans parent is better than a dead parent, though.
- meifun 2y agoI'd agree here. As a trans parent I have worried about what living an often non-socially acceptable lifestyle would do to them. But then I see the acceptance as my daughter proudly introduces me as her "mama" to her whole class. I'm a better parent alive living my truth than I am an "unalived" parent leaving a gap for those that loved me for me.
- nicolas_t 2y agoIt's heartwarming to see this from your daughter. Never doubt that you're a better parent alive living your truth and that your daughter is grateful for you being there for her. Best of luck for continuing your transition.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago> Although she had hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition.[19] IBM apologized for this in 2020. Given that in 2012 there was an entire IEEE magazine issue dedicated to her career and contributions to the field which really brought awareness of all her contributions...it's disappointing it took IBM so long to apologize, especially given they outed her circa ~2000.
- hyperliner 2y agoBut it eventually happened, which is a good thing. Society does not always change fast enough.
- skeeter2020 2y agoagreed. It did happen, but not fast enough, and that should be our motivation to continual push for change, even when we know it's inevitable
- hindsightbias 2y agoHave worked with several trans folks at major legacy corps like IBM and while I'm sure there may have been rank-and-file issues, discrimination was not tolerated by mgmt in the latter 90s. My memory is IBM and HP added non-discrimination policies around that time.
- groby_b 2y ago"discrimination was not tolerated by mgmt in the latter 90s" That's a really nice thought. Having lived as a trans woman in the 90s, it does not match reality though. Management is, always, a mixed bag. More and more managers indeed do not tolerate discrimination, but even in the face of policies, it exists. It certainly existed in the 90s, in very large patches. As for corporate policies, IBM added theirs (gender identity specifically) in 2002. HP had GLEN in 1995 - "Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual employee network". You'll note gender identity isn't part of that, though. (And bisexual is a silent B, I guess ;) If anybody knows when they included gender identity, I'd love to hear about it! Before that, it was patchwork-y, and your best bet was finding a corner of the corporation that was supportive. And never raising your head to far, just in case. (Many of us did anyways, but more often than not, that had indeed the expected outcome) Don't get me wrong, I'm happy and grateful HP & IBM were at the forefront of these policies. But it wasn't quite as easy a transition.
- tibbydudeza 2y agoI hope that at some point she could reconnect with her kids from her prior marriage.
- ksenzee 2y agoShe did. This was from 2000: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-nov-19-tm-54188-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-nov-19-tm-54188...
- canucker2016 2y agoSome more of Lynn's recollections with her kids/nieces at https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective5.html#anchor14955 https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective5.html#..., https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective5.html#anchor43632 https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective5.html#..., and https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective6.html https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective6.html
- tibbydudeza 2y agoThanks - glad she found closure and also happiness in the end.
- 1024core 2y agoWhy does the Wiki page say "citation needed" for calling her a "computer scientist, electrical engineer"?
- amin 2y ago[flagged]
- adamomada 2y agoThe tragedy of Wikipedia is that something like 3,000 people in the entire world are active editors (>100 edits)
- skyyler 2y agoBe the change you wish to see :) I edit wikipedia casually.
- m0llusk 2y agoAnd they focus largely on deletions which makes contributing frustrating.
- sltkr 2y agoThe last time I tried to contribute to Wikipedia I spent more than an hour crafting an initial article about Makoto Matsumoto, inventor of the popular Mersenne Twister PRNG, mostly using sources from the sister article on the Japanese wiki. Within moments, the article was deleted by a veteran editor who didn't consider the subject sufficiently notable. (This was apparently not an issue for the much smaller German, French and Japanese wikis.) My page was 1 of 5 pages he had deleted in the span of 15 minutes, which shows how much effort he personally spent on the decision to negate other contributor's work. Needless to say, I doubt I will ever try to contribute to Wikipedia again.
- arjie 2y agoSorry to hear about that. I am not an admin so I can only do exact searches in the Deletion Log https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&page=Makoto_Matsumoto_%28mathematician%29&wpdate=&tagfilter=&subtype=&wpFormIdentifier=logeventslist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&... and so I was unable to find the original article. Do you happen to have the contents of the page somewhere (I understand if you don't)? I will try to create the stub article with sources somewhere and see if I can defend it sufficiently this evening. EDIT: I was able to find the draft deletion over my lunch break! I have requested an undelete here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion#Draft%3AMakoto_Matsumoto_%28mathematician%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_undelet... But this evening, I can just create the article directly. Not because I have any particular authority but just because confirmed users from a long time ago can do this. If the draft is undeleted, I can recover your work! If not, and you still want to, I'll send you a message when I create the article and you can add to it. Totally understandable if the last experience soured you on it and you'd rather not.
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- SnooSux 2y agoShe spoke at my commencement a few years back. Her story is an interesting one
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago[flagged]
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- lynndotpy 2y agoI am pro trans rights, but this only looks like a ChatGPT response to be honest.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoYeah. Poorly done. I was trying to make some connection between how Turing was treated compared to Lynn. They were both 'different' and persecuted for it. And It seems like frequently people that are 'different' make big contributions, but are then just exploited by the 'system', whether a corporation, government, or capitalism in general. And, how maybe, all 'creative' types can fall into this trap in some way. My comment didn't really spell it out very well.
- mk_stjames 2y agoI am actually part way through reading Mead & Conway's "Introduction to VLSI Systems" right now; I decided to go through it just for history's sake a few weeks ago. It's amazing to imagine that time period, it seemed like they were just creating so many new ideas so fast in a completely new realm; making the tools to build new processors to make the tools faster to make new processors faster... on and on and on. They published the book in 1978. We've been on that roller coaster ever since. RIP.
- cbanek 2y agoLynn was a real role model for me over the past 25 years. I'm sad that I never got to meet her, but her technical impact is everywhere.
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- polairscience 2y agoFor those of you who are inclined to say "HackerNews doesn't deal with politics", I hope that Lynn's story reminds you that any work you do is intertwined with politics. While I appreciate that it's a difficult line to walk, to have productive and relevant political discussion in a forum like this, politics and social acceptance are a part of every aspect of our lives. Brilliant, kind, impactful people are kept from leading the life they want to lead every day because of societal intolerance for who they are. Incredible people like Lynn who have overcome that intolerance to lead a remarkable life should remind everyone of the suffering that others go through. There are uncountable other people who are not allowed to be themselves and who are suffocated in our society, with the lives of transgender people often ending in ostracisation or murder. One of the remarkable things about technology is that it enables trodden people to escape this tyranny to an extent once impossible. It enables marginalized people to be themselves in our world. Let us continue to enable that. Such "political" discussions and the impact technology has on them are an important part of the discourse here. I'm sad she is gone but I'm glad to see that this post is high up the front page. If you're inclined to denigrate transgender people, I encourage you to consider that they are trying to lead an honest life. I encourage you to consider what you're taking away from them and from the world by dehumanizing them. No matter why they are who they are.
- IntelMiner 2y agoAnybody who conflates human rights as "politics" are someone I simply cannot respect A persons right to exist is not political (This isn't a dig at OP but it's worth restating)
- marcuskane2 2y ago[flagged]
- nsomaru 2y agoHuman rights are intimately woven into International Law and state sovereignty. The work of the TWAIL scholars is relevant, especially as regards how human rights are deployed to undermine the sovereignty of the global south following the rapid “decolonisation” of the mid 20th century. I’m afraid it’s almost impossible to divorce politics and human rights.
- rockenman1234 2y agoMay she rest in peace, her achievements and contributions to the field of computing are unfortunately unknown to those outside of the field - but impacted so much more than just computing.
- tzs 2y ago> When nearing retirement, Conway learned that the story of her early work at IBM might soon be revealed through the investigations of Mark Smotherman that were being prepared for a 2001 publication That kind of makes it sound like Smotherman was poking around trying to find Conway's secrets. What was actually happening is that he was trying to research an early IBM supercomputer project, but was not having much luck. There was very little published information, and IBM had apparently lost its records. Smotherman asked on the net for help and Conway responded and gave him a massive amount of information. Here's an article that provides more information [1]. Here's the first few paragraphs: > Late in 1998, a young researcher delving into the secret history of a 30-year-old supercomputer project at IBM published an appeal for help. As Mark Smotherman explained in an Internet posting, he knew that the project had pioneered several supercomputing technologies. But beyond that, the trail was cold. IBM itself appeared to have lost all record of the work, as if having experienced a corporate lobotomy. Published details were sketchy and its chronology full of holes. He had been unable to find anyone with full knowledge of what had once been called “Project Y.” > Within a few days, a cryptic e-mail arrived at Smotherman’s Clemson University office in South Carolina. The sender was Lynn Conway, one of the most distinguished American women in computer science. She seemed not only to know the entire history of Project Y, but to possess reams of material about it. > Over the next few weeks, Conway helped Smotherman fill in many of the gaps, but her knowledge presented him with another mystery: How did she know? There was no mention of her name in any of the team rosters. Nor was any association with IBM mentioned in her published resume or in the numerous articles about her in technical journals. When he probed, she would reply only that she had worked at the company under a different name--and her tone made it clear there was no point in asking further. > What Smotherman could not know was that his appeal for strictly technical information had presented Lynn Conway with a deeply personal dilemma. She was eager for the story of IBM’s project to emerge and for her own role in the work to be celebrated, not suppressed. But she knew that could not happen without opening a door on her past she had kept locked for more than 30 years. > Only after agonizing for weeks did Conway telephone Smotherman and unburden herself of an extraordinary story. > “You see,” she began, “when I was at IBM, I was a boy.” [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-nov-19-tm-54188-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-nov-19-tm-54188...
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- atregir 2y agoWhat a terribly difficult life and yet with so many great achievements. An inspiration!
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- oldgregg 2y ago#1 Most Talented Female Engineer
- BSDobelix 2y agoStop putting peoples on #1 there are surprising examples, there is no #1 in any field, tesla, einstein or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Inventing_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Inventing_career https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/hedy-lamarr-radio-controlled-torpedo https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/hedy-lamarr-radio-c... ;)
- astrodust 2y agoEinstein wasn't even the best Einstein, that was that Super Dave Osborne! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Dave_Osborne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Dave_Osborne
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- HenryBemis 2y agoHow life plays things out... I was told earlier today that my best friend in this world has died. We haven't talked for the past 4-5 days (we usually catch up on the weekends - but this past weekend he had a packed concert-going-schedule - we live in different countries so I couldn't join). What sucks the most is that we use(d) Signal, and we have autodestruct every 2 days so apart from some really old emails, I got nothing left from him, and our frequent "correspondence". I am using the "Henry Bemis" moniker because he was making fun of me and my reading and I was making fun of him and his frequent cinema-going (and we both loved THAT episode of the Twilight Zone - Time enough at last)(great episode btw!!) And now I got into HN and I saw the black banner on top and I thought "WTF is going on today with the deaths!" and my stomach got a bit tighter. It sucks when people we love die. It's what Keanu said to Colbert "those who love us will miss us". My friend also "..would like to live five lives in the course of one life", but alas, he managed to live half of it. Farewell to those who fade/reincarnate/cross the river Styx/go to hell/go to paradise.. we will miss them. I don't maintain a blog, so I'll be keeping this bookmarked. Apologies for the 'spam', I wanted to get this out of my system. Anyway, sorry to hear Lynn Conway has died, looked technology just lost a great contributor.
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- sspiff 2y agoI never heard of her before today, despite having been interested and educated, and employed in computer science for so long. What a truly impressive list of achievements, and achieving such great things before, during and after transition gender in the 60s of all things. I can't imagine what they would have done without being hampered by the social stigma and discrimination they must have faced. It saddens me that I have only learned of her existence now, at her passing. RIP.
- Aloha 2y agoThis appears to the the source Wikipedia is citing - http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/wordPressNEW/2024/06/11/lynn-conway-january-2-1938-june-9-2024/ http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/wordPressNEW/2024/06/11/lynn-c...
- amysox 2y agoWhich is the personal blog of Helen Boyd, author of one of the classic books on crossdressing and transgender, My Husband Betty. I was hoping for something more authoritative...
- Aloha 2y agoAlso Same.
- canucker2016 2y agoWikipedia is now using https://news.engin.umich.edu/2024/06/the-legacy-of-lynn-conway-chip-design-pioneer-and-transgender-rights-advocate/ https://news.engin.umich.edu/2024/06/the-legacy-of-lynn-conw...
- amysox 2y agoThere's also now a story from the Los Angeles Times via Yahoo News: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/lynn-conway-leading-computer-scientist-013840387.html https://www.yahoo.com/tech/lynn-conway-leading-computer-scie...
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- robjwells 2y agoFor those skimming, this is the controversy over J Michael Bailey's book The Man Who Would Be Queen. I highly recommend reading Dreger's article. Conway (and others, particularly Andrea James) conducted a years-long campaign of harassment against Bailey. This included (among many other things) repeated attempts to get Bailey fired from his job at Northwestern, a series of vexatious complaints to an Illinois licensing board, and infamously posting photos online of Bailey's children suggesting that Bailey had raped them and asking whether his young daughter was "a cock-starved exhibitionist". Much of this material is still on Conway's University of Michigan-hosted webpage.
- mycologos 2y agoAs far as I know the example you mention was the work of Andrea James, and not Conway, but Conway's continued collaboration with someone that cruel and unhinged is, I think, an aspect of her life that shouldn't be ignored. (Does it cancel out her many unambiguously positive and praiseworthy achievements? No. People are complicated.)
- LocutusOfBorges 2y agoWorth nothing that J. Michael Bailey was eventually fired from his post at Northwestern for organising a spectacularly inappropriate sexual demonstration, put on in front of his students [1]. Bailey has, it must be said, worked extraordinarily hard to earn his negative reputation. Even beyond the sheer inappropriateness of this episode, I can’t say I disagree with Conway’s assessment of him. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/northwestern-university-p_n_830423/ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/northwestern-university-p_n_8...
- skissane 2y ago> Worth nothing that J. Michael Bailey was eventually fired from his post at Northwestern He wasn’t fired, he is still there: https://psychology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core/profiles/michael-bailey.html https://psychology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core/prof... > [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/northwestern-university-p_n_830423 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/northwestern-university-p_n_8... You are misreading that article from 2011 (13 years ago). It doesn’t say he was fired, it says he was “under fire” - which is journalistese for “being publicly criticised”. The article also mentions the university administration was investigating the incident - I don’t know what the outcome of that investigation was, but obviously it didn’t result in him being fired, because he’s still there.
- throwaway984393 2y ago[dead]
- verticalscaler 2y ago[flagged]
- moate 2y ago>> Is this volume of upvotes due to this person being accomplished in their field or because of the transgender thing Yes. >> What is it about computing that it has such a high concentration of trans people compared to other fields. First, prove your thesis: what is this “high concentration” and what “other fields” are you talking about? There seem to be a great deal of trans people in a great many places, and now that they’re less likely to be hatecrimed, they’re more likely to be out. If I had to guess why there are more (if there are)- computers allow people to exist as they want to be. Female avatar? Go for it. Anonymous shitposting of your most terrible racist/bigoted thoughts? Vent thine spleen. Also, most nerds are weird, which leads to many of them developing a great deal of empathy and a great distaste for exclusion. As a demographic, “computers” tends to attract a great deal of nerds with very strong feelings of right/wrong. That’s why I’m here: the jocks didn’t want me and the theater kids were too dramatic so I stuck it out with the geeks and weirdos (who also didn’t give a fuck who I wanted to sleep with as long as I could hold my own in the D&D campaign).
- verticalscaler 2y agoThere's no thesis, we're just talking. I don't understand why I got called names and hostile responses. Meh. The second part of your reply is great, I figured this would be the place to ask somebody who knows about it. I wish you'd have started and ended with that. I'm one of those very nerds who never cared about who wants to sleep with whom. I must note that on occasion trans techies are aggressively hostile to none trans techies and I don't appreciate it anymore than you do when it flows the other way.
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- bradneuberg 2y agoDid Conway's Law originate with Lynn Conway?
- sircastor 2y agoNo, Conway's Law[1] is attributed to Melvin Conway, a different computer Scientist. Also unrelated to either Lynn Conway, or Melvin Conway, is Conway's Life, which is named for John Conway[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway
- ncm140 2y agoBut she coined "The Conway Effect" When “others” (such as women and people of color) make innovative contributions in scientific and technical fields, they often “disappear” from later history and their contributions are ascribed elsewhere. This is seldom deliberate—rather, it’s a result of the accumulation of advantage by those who are expected to innovate. This article chronicles an example of such a disappearance and introduces the Conway Effect to elucidate the disappearance process. https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/2018/10/mco2018100066/17D45WXIkDI https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/2018/10/mco2018100...
- orsenthil 2y agoRIP, Lynn Conway. For those had a doubt like me, it is different Conway than another computer scientist,John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) famous for "Conway's Game of Life".
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- whoknowsidont 2y agoI'm ashamed to say I did not know about this person before today; what an interesting life she led. A true giant both for industry and people. Shame on all of "us" for missing the date.
- ncm140 2y agoIt's such a tragedy. She has an explanation, called "The Conway Effect." She wrote about it 2018. "When “others” (such as women and people of color) make innovative contributions in scientific and technical fields, they often “disappear” from later history and their contributions are ascribed elsewhere. This is seldom deliberate—rather, it’s a result of the accumulation of advantage by those who are expected to innovate. This article chronicles an example of such a disappearance and introduces the Conway Effect to elucidate the disappearance process." https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/2018/10/mco2018100066/17D45WXIkDI https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/2018/10/mco2018100...
- ncm140 2y ago[dupe]
- ncm140 2y agoOne of the world's most inspiring people. I had the privilege of getting to know her to write a profile for a University of Michigan alumni magazine more than a decade ago: https://news.engin.umich.edu/2014/10/life-engineered/ https://news.engin.umich.edu/2014/10/life-engineered/
- ncm140 2y agoMy favorite thing she said was "Why not question everything?" It stuck with me ever since.
- jbboehr 2y agoReminds me of this classic: https://x.com/pickover/status/1536108795901972480 https://x.com/pickover/status/1536108795901972480
- lennyzenith 2y agoShe was kind, generous and from my limited understanding incredibly influential to modern technology concepts. I was able to spend some time with her in Ann Arbor (2000's) and was included in her Successful Transgender People (as a musician). We talked over lunch, and I was struck by how expansive her knowledge and persona was. She and her husband Charlie, loved the outdoors, hiking and motocross. A giant not only for her scientific contributions, but for the resources and advocacy you did for the transgender community. She had to live 'stealth' for many years until an article was about to come out in the early 2000's where she then had to slowly come out to friends and colleauges. That is when she started her website (still hosted by Univ. of Michigan - lynnconway.com) which contains tons of history on her work and valuable resources for trans folk.
- ncm140 2y agoLenny! Expansive is the best word to describe her mind. She was a wonderer, observer, explorer and connector of ideas. …. I hope you are well! - Nicole, Michigan News alum
- chaosmanorism 2y ago[flagged]
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- dang 2y agoWe detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40649014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40649014. I'm sure you didn't intend to post yet-another flamewar tangent but that's what this would lead to in the limit case.
- SpaceManNabs 2y agolots of progress in transgender issues since then because of people like lynn conway. Because of people like her, fewer people will lose their careers (or have to rebuild) or kids just because they corrected their gender.
- asploder 2y agoI’m one of those many who owe her a debt of gratitude. May her memory be a blessing.
- valanha 2y agoAs am I
- amysox 2y agoIndeed. I certainly didn't lose mine when I transitioned in July 2017. In fact, I helped my company's HR department figure out how to handle it, as I was also a support group facilitator and had access to information that could help. Literally, I took a Thursday and Friday off (Thursday being the day my name change was granted) and came back as Amy on Monday. My cubicle nameplate had already been replaced, and someone had taped a "WELCOME AMY!" sign over one of my monitors. There were some bobbles with getting all my accounts changed, but those were quickly resolved. (I left that company two years later, and now work somewhere where I've never been anyone but Amy.)
- valanha 2y agoI am glad you had such a warm welcome :) I too, did not lose my job either; however, my reception was not as nice as yours. I moved on ten months or so later, and getting a "fresh start" where I was not known for anything other than my bona fides and my cv/resume, was wonderful.
- crosstalkpm 2y ago[dead]
- haeberli 2y agoI worked for / with Lynn at Xerox PARC from 1980 - 1982. She will be missed.
- joering2 2y agocreated in 2014 with 54 karma?? You should be posting much more - I am sure you have some great ideas to share with all of us.
- DonHopkins 2y agoHi, Martin? I saw you speak at Ted Selker's NPUC conference at IBM Almaden while you were working at Netscape, and I'm old friends with your brother Paul from when he was at SGI, and I love the cool Graphica Obscura and data flow visual programming stuff he did. I remember Ted Nelson was kind of brusk with you at NPUC because he didn't approve of Netscape's approach to Hypertext of course, but it didn't seem personal, just his usual ranting about how he got it right and everybody else got it wrong. ;) So did both you and Paul work with Lynn Conway's student James Clark at PARC, Netscape and SGI, who Lynn taught VLSI design and who made the Geometry Engine, right? I'd love to hear any of your and Paul's stories from those amazing times of PARC, SGI, and Netscape, too!
- bsaul 2y agoIs it an impression , or are computer people overly represented amongst trans people ? Maybe working with computers provides a better environment for people with social-related issues ?
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- amysox 2y agoAnd when you combine that with recent studies that show a correlation between autism and gender variance[1], that might provide some insight. [1] See e.g. <https://behavioral-innovations.com/blog/exploring-the-intersection-of-autism-and-gender-identity/ https://behavioral-innovations.com/blog/exploring-the-inters...>. "Research shows that people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are anywhere from three to six times as likely to have autism spectrum disorder as compared to cisgender people – those who do identify with the sex they were assigned at birth."
- cdelsolar 2y ago[dead]
- amysox 2y agoI wrote a Quora answer about this, based on some material I found from HN commenter "amyjess": https://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-transgender-women-work-in-the-IT-industry/answer/Amy-Bowersox https://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-transgender-women-work-in-... To summarize: It's a combination of the culture and the way that various overlapping subcultures are viewed by society.
- tstrimple 2y agoThese kids from hackers are quite welcoming of weirdness as long as you've got the skills to hang. https://i.imgur.com/w1mNGHZ.png https://i.imgur.com/w1mNGHZ.png I'm not trans, but I have to imagine that sort of acceptance is the goal. I wonder the degree to which our media portrayal of hacker subculture has influenced the desire among certain demographics / subcultures to gravitate towards those jobs.
- joering2 2y ago"...Lynn was recently awarded the rare IBM Lifetime Achievement Award, given to individuals who have changed the world through technology inventions." After the way they treated her, I wouldn't accept it.
- seethedeaduu 2y agoLet this thread be a lesson that no matter how nice you are and no matter your achievements, as long as you are trans you can't even die in peace.
- pcurve 2y ago"Although she had hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition.[20] IBM apologized for this in 2020." Good grief. Took them long enough.
- mrdomino_ 2y agoVery sad. Do we know how she passed?
- canucker2016 2y agoThe LA Times article says "Conway died Sunday, according to her husband, Charles Rogers, at home in Jackson, Mich., of a heart condition." see https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-06-11/lynn-conway-leading-computer-scientist-and-transgender-pioneer-dies-at-85 https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-06-11/lynn-conwa...
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- idkdotcom 2y agoRIP. A great reminder that great achievers tend to be idiosyncratic people, not necessarily "by the book, SAT 1600, GPA 4.0, Ivy League Plus" people. We should all be thankful for her contributions and for those who preceded her who were similarly "abnormal" by the standards of their time.
- armitron 2y agoIdiosyncratic with a genius-level 155 IQ (which is something that the prevailing cultural zeitgeist does its best to bulldoze)
- idkdotcom 2y agoIn my view, the lesson of Lynn's life and contributions is twofold: - California continues to be a necessary place for America and the world. By this I mean not just the geography, but a place that welcomes people from all walks of life seeking new beginnings. - Never give up. Seriously. She was in her late 30s, early 40s -an age many would have considered "old" in the 1970s- when she made the breakthrough that made her famous.
- CalChris 2y agoLynn Conway, Dynamic Instruction Scheduling https://web.archive.org/web/20150814232249/https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/ACS/DIS/DIS.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150814232249/https://ai.eecs.u... This report was issued February 23, 1966 which was close to a year before Tomasulo's An Efficient Algorithm for Exploiting Multiple Arithmetic Units. I'd never heard of this report before today. It isn't taught in Berkeley's CS152/252. It's not mentioned in Hennessy and Patterson's books.
- ziyao_w 2y agoWow, 4 citations. I feel happy for Lynn that she ended up doing a lot more impressive work, but definitely this should be restored to its proper place in the history of computing. Something doesn't quite compute here though - according to Wikipedia after she announced her intent to transition Lynn was fired in 1968, but this paper was from 1966 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40650635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40650635 also does not have any information. Maybe at least someone shielded her for some time? Also Francis Allen seems to have worked on the same project at IBM - she mentioned there were works by other women that other people (Turning award winners IIRC) took credit of - could Lynn's work be one of those? Really hope Fran and Lynn would at least knew each other.
- gammarator 2y agoThis article says that she corrected her name when she posted the scanned paper to her website around 2000. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-nov-19-tm-54188-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-nov-19-tm-54188...
- ziyao_w 2y agolol thanks! Read probably 80% of the article and missed this: "Almost before knowing it, she had decided. Lynn copied the most important papers. After carefully eradicating her old name and inserting the new on every title page[...]"
- adapteva 2y agoOh no, we have lost another giant! Very few people in the world know the gratitude she is owed. I doubt Nvidia and the other fabless companies would exist without her contribution. I met her through DARPA in 2018 [ref] and I later reached out for advice when I started a company in 2020. She was kind and generous with her time in all of our interactions. Beyond her technical prowess, she really understood people. The community/collabroation aprpach she used to launch the VLSI revolution in the 1970's are worth studying. RIP [ref] https://youtu.be/W_cB8VYunY8?si=9M9QVmBipbKUXxMR&t=1414 https://youtu.be/W_cB8VYunY8?si=9M9QVmBipbKUXxMR&t=1414
- mybrid 2y ago[flagged]
- lemper 2y agoi have some questions. if an academia transitions after their graduation, what would be written in the papers? the deadname or the current name? or one can ask the authoritative institution to issue new papers with the current name on it? also, what would happen to their publication? i genuinely have never thought of it before.
- connicpu 2y agoColleges will issue updated paperwork after any kind of legal name change. Keep in mind, for most of recent history approx. half the population has been changing their legal last name when they get married, so institutions have had to deal with this on a broad scale for quite a while. Probably not for publications though, except in rare circumstances
- lemper 2y agoah right bro. forgot that on that part of the world, half of that people change their name when they're getting married. thanks for the answer.
- pfdietz 2y agoI believe the deadname stays on old publications, although in today's electronic publications it could be updated. The example I think of is the person who built one of the first superoptimizers.
- gcanyon 2y agoSince many are focusing on the transgender aspect, I'll mention this thoughtful article (the trans argument starts in section V). It's been years since I first came across it, but it really affected my thinking on trans people. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-ma...
- Cordiali 2y ago> She worked at IBM in the 1960s and invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance. I only found out about her a few weeks ago, when I was trying to understand that recent GhostRace exploit. It uses out-of-order execution, which led me to her. There's a fun little cartoon about her somewhere on YouTube, but I can't find it. Sad that she's now gone!
- valanha 2y agoI know it was already suggested in previous comments, but I do not see the black bar? Was it removed already?
- valanha 2y agonever mind, I answered my own question :) I just realized it is only so long as the article/news of the death of the individual is at the top of HN.
- y0ned4 2y agoHow touching to read so many appreciative comments A life well spent RIP Lynn, may the earth be light on you
- fleetingmoments 2y agoShe was and remains a huge inspiration to many of us. I remember peering over her pages of "Transgender Success Stories" which chronicled trans people who led lives with some measure of success in the 90s and early 2000s. When I came out to my parents as a EE student and trans woman myself, her story was the one resource I made them read. To no avail, mind you, my father called me brainwashed and told me the journey I was on was the "Con Way". I didn't listen and although I never lived up to her professional achievements, my transition was very successful.
- jmcgough 2y agoI was a teenager in the early 2000s era of internet trans support groups. Lynn's website was one of like three online resources at the time. The goal back then was to transition, pass, and kind of blend in and live your life with minimal harassment. Conway living out and openly back then (as a very successful researcher, no less) was revolutionary. She made things a bit easier for the rest of us who came after.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y agoWe covered VLSI design as part of Comp. Sci at Bristol, UK c.1980, based on Conway & Mead's "Introduction to VLSI systems". Comp. Sci was mostly software, but we also did some 7400 series TTL bread boarding in the lab - building things like traffic-light LED sequencers based on DIY flip flops made out of NAND gates. VLSI design was a revelation - that there was a different way to designing things than out of TTL "lego bricks", and that you could go full custom instead ! I was never aware of Lynn Conway's personal transgender challenges - more power to her for having had such an amazing career and impact while dealing with this.
- incomingpain 2y agoIBM did apologize to her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway#IBM's_apology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway#IBM's_apology 86 years old! She had a great life.
- AlgorithmicTime 2y ago[dead]
- AlgorithmicTime 2y ago[dead]
- pfdietz 2y agoHer life sounds like an interesting one (in good and bad ways). I would like to read a biography, or even see a biographical or dramatized film about it.
- hackernj 2y agohttps://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trans-woman-and-computer-pioneer https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trans-woman-and-computer-...
- Lance_ET_Compte 2y agoR.I.P.
- Syzygies 2y agon the 1980's, Lynn Conway gave one of the two best talks I've heard in my life. She used sociology to understand how to spread radical ideas, starting with the example of birds in England teaching each other how to poke the foil in milk deliveries, to drink the cream. She applied this to teaching a revolutionary approach to VSLI chip design, in schools across the country. I had no idea she was trans. When I figured this out, it became part of my spiel to students: If being different doesn't destroy you, it'll make you stronger. It's not simply that one can be just as good a scientist while being gay, for example. No, we live in a country so stupid it may reelect Trump, and there are still issues with being different. If the experience can teach you that many people are crippled by convention and full of shit, that revelation can liberate you to do more original work.
- sirmike_ 2y agoJames Conway.