• 1920 December 21
    (b.) -
    1964
    (d.)

Bio/Description

She attended the University of Chicago, and was married to Herman Goldstine, the military liaison and administrator for the construction of the ENIAC. As a teacher of mathematics for the women "computers" at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, she also trained some of the 6 women who were the original programmers of ENIAC to perform hand calculations of the firing table trajectory. She wrote the Operators Manual for the ENIAC after the 6 women (Kay McNulty, Betty Jean Jennings(Jean Bartik), Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman) trained themselves to program the ENIAC using its logical and electrical block diagram. During this time, programming the machine meant moving dials and cables manually. In 1946 she sat in on programming sessions with Bartik and Dick Clippinger to implement Clippinger's stored program modification to the ENIAC. John von Neumann was a consultant on the selection of the instruction set implemented. This solved the problem of the programmers having to unplug and replug patch cables for every program the machine was to run; instead the program was entered on the three function tables, which had previously been used only for storage of a trajectory's drag function. ENIAC programmer Jean Bartik called her one of her three perfect partners in designing programs or logical design. They worked together to program the Taub program for the ENIAC. In ?Turing?s Cathedral? by George Dyson it is noted, ?Robert Richtmyer moved to the Institute in Princeton to begin coding (with the assistance of Kl?ri Von Neumann and Adele Goldstine) the calculation that became known as Hippo??.
  • Date of Birth:

    1920 December 21
  • Date of Death:

    1964
  • Gender:

    Female
  • Noted For:

    Writer of the complete technical description for the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC
  • Category of Achievement:

  • More Info: