Lynn Conway (born 1938) is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
computer scientistComputer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe and transform...
,
electrical engineerElectrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
,
inventorAn inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find...
, trans woman, and activist for the
transgenderTransgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to diverge from the normative gender roles....
community.
Conway is notable for several technical achievements, including the
Mead & Conway revolutionThe term Mead & Conway revolution stands for the VLSI design revolution which had an impact by a worldwide restructuring of academic education, and by being the breeding ground for new kinds of industries based on microelectronics application...
in VLSI design, which incubated an emerging
electronic design automationElectronic Design Automation is the category of tools for designing and producing electronic systems ranging from printed circuit boards to integrated circuits. This is sometimes referred to as ECAD or just CAD...
industry. She worked at
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
in the 1960s and is credited with the invention of generalised dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in
out-of-order executionIn computer engineering, out-of-order execution is a paradigm used in most high-performance microprocessors to make use of instruction cycles that would otherwise be wasted by a certain type of costly delay.-History:...
, used by most modern
computer processorsThe Central Processing Unit or processor is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, and is the primary element carrying out the computer's functions. This term has been in use in the computer industry at least since the early 1960s...
to improve performance.
Early life and education
Born and raised as a boy, Conway grew up in
White Plains, New YorkThe City of White Plains is the county seat of Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located in south-central Westchester, about east of the Hudson River and northwest of Long Island Sound...
. Although shy and experiencing gender dysphoria as a child, she became fascinated and engaged by
astronomyAstronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere...
(building a 6 inch reflector telescope one summer) and did well in math and science in high school. Conway entered MIT in 1955, earning high grades there. She attempted a gender transition in 1957-8, but this effort failed due to the medical climate at the time, and Conway left MIT in despair. After working as an electronics technician for several years, Conway resumed her education at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, earning her B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963.
Early research at IBM
Conway was recruited by
IBMInternational Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating...
Research in
Yorktown Heights, New YorkYorktown Heights is a census-designated place in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 7,972 people at the 2000 census.-Geography:Yorktown Heights is located at ....
in 1964. She was soon selected to join the
architectureIn computer engineering, computer architecture is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It is a blueprint and functional description of requirements and design implementations for the various parts of a computer, focusing largely on the way by which the...
team designing an advanced
supercomputerA supercomputer is a computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers were introduced in the 1960s and were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation , and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form...
, working alongside
John CockeJohn Cocke was an American computer scientist recognised for his large contribution to computer architecture and optimizing compiler design. He is considered by many to be "the father of RISC architecture."...
, Herbert Schorr, Ed Sussenguth, Fran Allen and other IBM researchers on the Advanced Computing Systems (ACS) project, inventing multiple-issue dynamic instruction scheduling while working there.
Gender transition
After learning of the pioneering research of Dr.
Harry BenjaminHarry Benjamin was a German endocrinologist, widely known for his clinical work with transsexualism.- Early life and career :...
in transgender treatment and realizing that a full gender transition was now possible, Conway sought his help and became his patient. After suffering from severe
depressionMajor depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
over her situation, Conway contacted Dr. Benjamin, who agreed to counsel her and prescribe
hormonesHormone replacement therapy for transgender and transsexual people may refer to:*Hormone replacement therapy *Hormone replacement therapy...
. Under Dr. Benjamin's care, she began preparing for transition.
While struggling with life in a male role, Conway had been married to a woman and had two children. Under the legal constraints of the day, she was denied access to their children when she transitioned.
Although she hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed to them that she was transsexual, and was planning on
transitioningTransitioning is the process of changing genders - the idea of what it means to be female or male. For transsexuals, the new gender is "opposite" that of birth sex; for intersex people it is different from how they were raised; for genderqueer people it is neither solely female nor male...
to a female
gender roleA gender role is defined as a set of perceived behavioral norms associated particularly with males or females, in a given social group or system. It can be a form of division of labour by gender. It is a focus of analysis in the social sciences and humanities...
.
Career as computer scientist
On completing her transition in 1968, Conway took a new name and identity, and restarted her career in "stealth-mode" as a contract programmer at Computer Applications, Inc. She went on to work at
MemorexEstablished in 1961 in Silicon Valley, Memorex is today a consumer electronics brand of Imation specializing in disk recordable media , travel drives, flash storage, computer accessories and other electronics....
during 1969–1972 as a digital system designer and computer architect.
Conway joined
Xerox PARCPARC , formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California with a distinguished reputation for its contributions to information technology....
in 1973, where she led the "LSI Systems" group under
Bert SutherlandWilliam R. Sutherland , older brother of Ivan Sutherland, was the longtime manager of three prominent research labs, including Sun Microsystems Laboratories , the Systems Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC , and the Computer Science Division of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc...
. Collaborating with
Carver MeadProfessor Carver Andress Mead is a prominent U.S. computer scientist. He is the Gordon and Betty Moore professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology , having taught there for over 40 years.Mead studied electrical engineering at Caltech, getting his B.S. in 1956, his M.S. in 1957,...
of Caltech on VLSI design methodology, she co-authored
Introduction to VLSI Systems, a groundbreaking work that would soon become a standard textbook in chip design, used in over 100 universities by 1983. The book and early courses were the beginning of the
Mead & Conway revolutionThe term Mead & Conway revolution stands for the VLSI design revolution which had an impact by a worldwide restructuring of academic education, and by being the breeding ground for new kinds of industries based on microelectronics application...
in VLSI system design.
In 1978, Conway served as visiting associate professor of
EECSEECS may refer to:* Electrical Engineering and Computer Science* European Energy Certificate System...
at MIT, teaching a now famous VLSI design course based on a draft of the Mead–Conway text. The course validated the new design methods and textbook, and established the syllabus and instructor’s guidebook used in later courses all around the world.
Among Conway’s contributions were invention of dimensionless, scalable
design rulesDesign Rule Checking or Check is the area of Electronic Design Automation that determines whether the physical layout of a particular chip layout satisfies a series of recommended parameters called Design Rules...
that greatly simplified chip design and design tools, and invention of a new form of internet-based infrastructure for rapid-prototyping and short-run fabrication of large numbers of chip designs. The new infrastructure was institutionalized as the
MOSISMOSIS is probably the oldest integrated circuit foundry service and one of the first Internet services other than supercomputing services and basic infrastructure such as E-mail or FTP....
system in 1981. Since then, MOSIS has fabricated more than 50,000 circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and research and educational institutions around the world. The research methods used to develop the Mead-Conway VLSI design methodology and the MOSIS prototype are documented in a 1981 Xerox report and the Euromicro Journal. Conway and her colleagues have compiled an online archive of original papers that documents much of that work.
In the early 1980s, Conway left Xerox to join DARPA, where she was a key architect of the
Defense DepartmentThe United States Department of Defense is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the military...
's
Strategic Computing InitiativeThe U.S. government's Strategic Computing Initiative funded research into advanced computer hardware and artificial intelligence from 1983 to 1993. The initiative was designed to support all the various projects that were required to develop machine intelligence in a ten year time frame, from chip...
, a research program studying high-performance computing,
autonomous systemAutonomous system may refer to:* Autonomous system , a collection of IP networks and routers under the control of one entity* Autonomous system , a system of ordinary differential equations which does not depend on the independent variable* Autonomous robot, robots which can perform desired tasks...
s technology, and intelligent weapons technology.
Conway joined the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
in 1985 as professor of
electrical engineeringElectrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
and
computer scienceComputer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe and transform...
, and associate dean of engineering. There she worked on "visual communications and control probing for basic system and user-interface concepts as applicable to hybridized internet/broadband-cable communications". She retired from active teaching and research in 1998, as professor emerita at Michigan.
Awards and honors
Conway has received a number of awards and distinctions:
- Electronics Magazine 1981 Award for Achievement
- Pender Award of the Moore School, University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and is one of several institutions that claims to have been the first university in America...
, 1984
- Fellow of the IEEE, 1985, "for contributions to VLSI technology"
- Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute
The Franklin Institute is a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the oldest and premier centers of science education and development in the United States. The Institute itself comprises three centers — The Science Center, The Franklin Center, and The Center for Innovation in Science...
, 1985
- Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Award, May 1985
- Member of the National Academy of Engineering
The United States National Academy of Engineering , a private, non-profit institution that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
, 1989
- National Achievement Award, Society of Women Engineers
The Society of Women Engineers , founded in 1950, is a not-for-profit educational and service organization. SWE is the driving force that establishes engineering as a highly desirable career aspiration for women. SWE empowers women to succeed and advance in those aspirations and be recognized for...
, 1990
- Presidential Appointment to the United States Air Force Academy Board of Visitors, 1996
- Honorary Doctorate, Trinity College
Trinity College is a private, liberal arts college in Hartford, Connecticut. Founded in 1823, it is the second oldest college in the state of Connecticut after Yale University...
, 1998
- Electronic Design
First published 55 years ago, Electronic Design is the largest published print magazine for the electronic design industry published in the USA by Penton Media....
Hall of Fame, 2002
- Engineer of the Year, National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientific and Technical Professionals, 2005
Transgender activism
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. She began quietly
coming outComing out of the closet, or simply coming out, is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people disclosing their sexual orientation and gender identity...
in 1999 to friends and colleagues about her past gender transition, using her personal website to tell the story in her own words. Her story was then more widely reported in 2000 in profiles in Scientific American and the Los Angeles Times.
After going public with her story, she began work in transgender activism, intending to "illuminate and normalize the issues of gender identity and the processes of gender transition." She has worked to protect and expand the rights of transgendered people. She has provided direct and indirect assistance to numerous other transsexual women going through transition and maintains a well-known website providing emotional and medical resources and advice. Parts have been translated into most of the world's major languages. She maintains a listing of many successful post-transition transsexual people, to, in her words "provide role models for individuals who are facing gender transition." Her website also provides current news related to transgender issues and information on
sex reassignment surgery for transsexual womenSex reassignment surgery from male to female involves reshaping the male genitals into a form with the appearance of and, as far as possible, the function of female genitalia. Prior to any surgeries, transwomen usually undergo hormone replacement therapy and facial hair removal...
,
facial feminization surgeryFacial feminization surgery refers to surgical procedures that alter the human face to bring its features closer in shape and size to those of an average female human. FFS includes various bony and soft tissue procedures though the term "FFS" is generally not regarded to include facial hair...
, academic inquiries into the prevalence of transsexualism and transgender/transsexual issues in general.
Conway has been a prominent critic of the
Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theoryThe Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory is a highly controversial model and taxonomy of gender dysphoria in biological males, including male-to-female transsexuals. It was proposed in the late 1980s by Ray Blanchard, a sexologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto...
of male-to-female transsexualism, objecting to the hypothesis that all transsexual women are motivated either by
feminine homosexualityHomosexual transsexual is a term that has been used by some sexologists, psychologists and psychiatrists to describe transwomen who are attracted to men, and less often transmen who are attracted to women. The terms androphilic and gynephilic are replacing those terms in active use...
or
autogynephiliaAutogynephilia is the term coined in 1989 by Ray Blanchard to refer to "a man's paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman." It has been theorized to...
. She was also a key person in the campaign against
J. Michael BaileyJohn Michael Bailey is an American psychologist and professor at Northwestern University. He is best known among scientists for his work on the etiology of sexual orientation, from which he concluded that homosexuality is substantially inherited...
's controversial book
The Man Who Would Be QueenThe Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism is a 2003 book by J. Michael Bailey, published by Joseph Henry Press...
. Conway and others filed a complaint with Northwestern University accusing Bailey of practicing clinical psychology without a license,
and witnessed a complaint by a transwoman accusing Bailey of having sex with a research subject.
Benedict Carey wrote an article in which he observed that "the controversy had a life of its own on the Internet."
Northwestern University professor Alice Dreger published an article about the controversy, in which she concluded that the campaign against Bailey was an attempt to ruin Bailey's reputation and career by making various false accusations against him. Conway called Dreger's article "one-sided" and complained that its publication, and Carey's article, reflected pro-Bailey bias by the
Archives of Sexual Behavior and
The New York Times.
Conway was a cast member in the first all-
transgenderTransgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to diverge from the normative gender roles....
performance of
The Vagina MonologuesThe Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler which ran at the off-Broadway Westside Theatre after a limited run at HERE Arts Center in 1996. Ensler originally starred in the production; when she left the play it was recast with three celebrity monologists...
, in
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the municipality of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123.445 inhabitants...
in 2004, and appeared in a LOGO-Channel documentary film about that event entitled
Beautiful Daughters.
She has also strongly advocated for equal opportunities and employment protections for transgender people in high-technology industry,
[“Another Milestone in the Journey: GI and E Added to EEO Policy”, Raytheon GLBTA NEWS, August – October 2005.]
and for elimination of the pathologization of transgender people by the psychiatric community.
In 2009, Conway was named one of the "Stonewall 40 trans heros" on the 40th anniversary of the
Stonewall riotsThe Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...
by the International Court System, one of the oldest and largest predominantly gay organizations in the world, and the
National Gay and Lesbian Task ForceThe National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is an organization working for the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United States. It was founded in 1973 in New York. It is the oldest national LGBT rights organization in the United States...
.
Home life
In 1987, Conway met her husband Charlie, a professional engineer who shares her interest in the outdoors, including canoeing and motocross. They soon started living together, and bought a house with 24 acres of meadow, marsh, and woodland in rural
MichiganMichigan is a Midwestern state of the United States of America. It was named after Lake Michigan, whose name is a French adaptation of the Ojibwe term mishigama, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
in 1994. In 2002, they were married.
External links
- Lynn Conway's website – primarily written in English, but many articles are provided in other languages as well.