I had people that came in from NYU—the Courant Institute—who hadtheir own way of thinking about doing things because they’d come throughthe same graduate school. And then I had a couple people from MIT. One inparticular—a woman—was on the very theoretical side and a verywonderful thinker in a different way. The Illinois people had some differentcharacteristics. So even taking out the gender differences or other culturaldifferences, the fact that they came from these different places provided, inand of itself, a much stronger group.

Seibel: I suppose if we get to the point where undergraduate computerscience is split 50/50 by gender we could actually lose some of thatexperiential diversity, if everyone is going through the same sort of CSdegree.

Allen: What makes some of the new graduates very appealing to, say, IBM,is that they’re not staying in one discipline. They move from one disciplineto another. And they can be deeply technical but very diverse disciplines.Often it’s done purposefully—a person decides that they want to connectsome big fields. I’ve talked to some people like that—they see a connectionbetween working in linguistics and working in computing. They’re veryappealing as an employee.

Seibel: So how are you feeling about the “50/50 by 2020” project?

Allen: Pretty discouraged about it.

Seibel: What are the steps that should be taken to get to that goal? Do youneed to change math education in junior high school? As I understand it,that’s where a lot of girls drop out of math and science—before that girlsstill love math.

Allen: That’s been a popular belief, but I don’t believe it. Look at theWestinghouse competitions. Women are winning those. And there are a lotof women in engineering—taking all the tough sciences and mathematics inhigh schools. At my little high school in Croton, New York, we had aWestinghouse person nationally come in fifth. And they have a nice scienceprogram. Six of the seven people in it this year at the senior level arewomen doing amazing pieces of individual science.

What’s happening with those women is that they’re going into sociallyrelevant fields. Computer science could be extremely socially relevant, butthey’re going into earth sciences, biological sciences, medicine. Medicine isgoing to be 50/50 very soon. A lot of fields have belied that theory, but wehaven’t.

Seibel: What is it, then, about computer science that is so unappealing?

Allen: A lot of people think it’s the games and the nerdiness of sitting infront of a computer all day. It’s going to be interesting how these new socialnetworks online will have an effect. I don’t know. But I feel it’s our problemto solve. It’s not telling the educators to change their training; we in thefield have to make it more appealing.

We have to give the field an identity that expands it further than the identityit seems to have now—a much more human identity. We haven’t articulatedwhy we like this field and what’s exciting about it and what’s exciting aboutthe future and why it’s a great field to be in.

Seibel: So why do you like it?

Allen: Part of it is that there’s the potential for new ideas every day. Onesees something, and says, “Oh, that’s new.” The whole field gets refreshedvery frequently. It’s very exciting to think about what the potential for all ofthis is and the impacts it can have.

Isaac Asimov made a statement about the future of computers—I don’tknow whether it’s right or not—that what they’ll do is make every one ofus much more creative. Computing would launch the age of creativity. Onesees some of that happening—particularly in media. Kids are doing thingsthey weren’t able to do before—make movies, create pictures. We tend tothink of creativity as a special gift that a person has, just as being able toread and write were special gifts in the Dark Ages—things only a few peoplewere able to do. I found the idea that computers are the enablers ofcreativity very inspiring.

Seibel: You have been the first woman in many categories—first TuringAward winner, first IBM Fellow. Do you feel like there were women beforeyou who were overlooked?

Allen: Oh, yes, absolutely.

Seibel: So when you won the Turing, did you think to yourself, “Gee,there’s another woman who should have won this a long time ago?”

Allen: Well, the very first thing I thought about was how wonderful it was.And then I started to think about all the many other women who werenever recognized at all for their work. In many cases, their work was stolen.I thought about the women who had done some very amazing things thathave not been recognized, even by their peers. When I approach them andsay, “You need to join some professional organizations—I’ll write somerecommendations for you,” they kind of shy away from that.

Seibel: So you think that part of the problem is they don’t get recognizedbecause they’re not putting themselves in a place to be recognized as easily.

Allen: Right.

Seibel: Are there any particular folks that you would like to name—to givea little recognition now?

Allen: Well, there’s Edith Schonberg, who is a great computer scientist. Interms of technical work, it’s just one first after another on some of herpapers. She’s had work stolen—absolutely brutally stolen. She wrote apaper on debugging of parallel code, which is a very hard problem. It wasnot accepted at a conference and somebody who had been on the programcommittee made three papers out of it. That kind of thing. It happens in ourfield and we don’t have good ways of dealing with it.

Seibel: And it happens more to women?

Allen: Yes, I think it does. They were often viewed as not going to put up afight—that they were more isolated and don’t have the advocates who willdeal with a famous thief. He was a famous thief, known but nobody daredtouch it. And there are plenty of others way back from the Stretch days.There was a woman who essentially was the inventor of multiprogrammingand credit was taken by somebody who eventually became a Turing Awardwinner.

Seibel: Would you have rather won the Turing Award, but not had to havebeen the first woman? There were a lot of newspaper stories: “WomanWins the Turing Award,” which I imagine might be a little annoying. Ifanother woman had won it ten years ago, and been the first, and you couldhave just won it when you did, do you think you would’ve preferred that?

Allen: Well, I can’t say preferred or not preferred. I feel I won it for a verygood set of reasons. And it took a long time because it was not always clearwhat I was doing in some sense. I always worked with a group. Workedwith some great, famous people often. And the work could easily beattributed to somebody else—to John Cocke, who distributed ideaseverywhere. Lots of people have received accolades and awards becausethey picked up on something from him, as we all did.

But I was very glad to get it and partly because it was late for a woman toget it. I felt it was an embarrassment for the community that there were 50men in 40 years, or whatever it was. So I felt it was certainly overdue forsome woman to achieve it, and I was perfectly happy to be the first. But Isteered a little bit clear of making a big deal out of that aspect of it. I triedto focus a lot more on the length of my career and the whole history of it.

Seibel: How does it feel to have spent your whole career at IBM?

Allen: Working for IBM Research was one of the most fortunate thingsthat ever happened to me because IBM Research sits between industry andacademia. I have a picture of a stone wall that I’m standing on and can lookeither way and find interesting problems and opportunities in both ways.