After 52 years: IBM has finally apologized to the computer pioneer who was fired for being transgender-IBM-cnBeta.COM

According to foreign media reports, you may never have heard of 82-year-old computer scientist Lynn Conway (Lynn Conway), but his discovery powered everyone’s smartphones and computers. His research led Silicon Valley startups to success, provided US defense support and fueled the Internet.

It is reported that prior to becoming a respected professor at the University of Michigan, Conway was a junior researcher at IBM. It was there that on August 29, 1968, the CEO of IBM fired her for illegal reasons. Now, nearly 52 years later, IBM apologizes and asks Conway for forgiveness in a way that defines its current culture.

On January 2, 1938, Lynn Conway’s life began in Mount Vernon, New York. According to reports, Conway has an IQ of 155. She is a special and curious little girl who as a teenager showed an unusual penchant for math and science. Subsequently, he studied physics at MIT and earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University School of Engineering. In 1964, Conway joined the IBM Research Center, where he made major innovations in computer design. Later, Conway got married and had two young daughters, leading a seemingly perfect life. But Conway faced a profound challenge linked to existence: she was born a boy.

Since childhood, Conway has struggled with her gender identity. In the late 1950s, when she was still an MIT student, she tried to change sex but ended in failure. In 1967, she learned of the pioneering gender transformation work of Dr. Harry Benjamin (a partner of famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey) who lives in Manhattan. So Conway sought out the doctor’s help and began his transition from male to female.

Despite the cultural foolishness of the time, her close relatives and the management of the IBM department accepted and supported her. However, in 1968, when IBM’s medical director informed of his plan, CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr. fired Conway to avoid embarrassing the company in public by hiring transgender people.

This decision dramatically changed Conway’s life. The loss of income and the imminent inability to support the family broke the divorce plan that wanted to proceed smoothly with visiting rights. To make matters worse, the California social services agency threatened her to issue a restraining order if she wanted to see her children.

Conway was destroyed by these unexpected events. Although she clearly and firmly acknowledges that she was born in the wrong sex, society and the government consider her a desperate freak. Conway said: “I have started a very dangerous crossing. I’m not sure I can pass.”

Despite this, he persisted in his social, hormonal and surgical procedures and began looking for work in a new secret identity in early 1969. Early on, Conway landed a job as a contract programmer and quickly climbed his career. In 1971 he worked as a computer architect at Memorex. In 1973 she became famous and was hired by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

In 1977, while leading the Palo Alto Research Center’s research on improvement methods for computer chip design, Conway began working with Professor Caver Mead of the California Institute of Technology to write a book on these methods. As a visiting professor at MIT, she and Mead created and taught an experimental course on large-scale integrated chip design based on a draft of her textbook during the PARC vacation.

“Introduction to VLSI Systems” published in 1980 established the basic principles for the design of future microprocessor chips in the Moore’s Law era. Conway’s VLSI research at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and the standards she created in MIT textbooks and teaching promoted the development of many Silicon Valley startups in the 1980s.

In 1983, the United States Department of Defense recruited Conway to join the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as Deputy Director of the Strategic Information Technology Division. As a pioneer in the research of artificial intelligence technology at the Ministry of Defense, her work won the Minister of Defense Honorary Achievement Award from Minister Caspar Weinberg.

Then Conway brought his skills and insatiable curiosity to academia. In 1985, the University of Michigan hired her as a professor of computer science and electrical engineering and associate dean of the School of Engineering. He worked at this university for 15 years – during this period, helped the engineering school of the school to become one of the nation’s best college – and withdrew in 1999, and later served as honorary professor of electrical and computer engineering . .

For more than 30 years since 1968, Conway has never revealed that he is a transgender person, with the exception of close friends, relatives, human resources offices and security enforcement agencies. However, in 1999, when computer historians began to investigate his first innovations at IBM, he foresaw the inevitability of a public appearance. With the support of her husband Charlie, she chose to put her gender story online, including why she left IBM.

Many of Conway’s colleagues were surprised by the disclosure of the matter, they never suspected Conway was transgender. In 2000, his former colleague at the University of Michigan, then chairman of MIT and IBM board member Charles Vest, related this story to then IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner. Gerstner was shocked at what IBM did, but couldn’t find a solution. Over the next 20 years, IBM has avoided this problem.

Freed from the fear of being exposed, Conway has gained a strong voice in transgender activism, often sharing stories of how to overcome difficulties after IBM was fired. She jokingly said: “From the 1970s to 1999, as a woman, I was thought to have broken the gender barrier in computing, but in 2000 I broke the transgender barrier.”

Since then, she has won many awards from advocacy organizations, including being named one of the “Stonewall 40 Transgender Heroes” by ICS and NGLTF in 2009. In 2014, she was also named one of the most influential LGBTQ figures in American culture by Time magazine. .

In recent years, Conway’s contributions to science and engineering have also begun to receive broader review attention. Conway said: “Since I don’t look like an engineer, hardly anyone knew what I was doing in the 70s and 80s.”

And as awareness spreads, so does recognition. Conway received the famous IEEE James Clerk Maxwell Medal and the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2015. In addition, he has also received medals from the Illinois Institute of Technology (2014), the University of Victoria (2016) and the University of Michigan for Ann Arbor (2018) honorary doctorate.

Although IBM knew its key role in the Conway incident, the company remained silent. But in August 2020 everything changed.

When a “Forbes” reporter wrote an article on LGBTQ diversity in the automotive industry, he contacted IBM and wondered if his position had changed 52 years later. Surprisingly, IBM admitted that she regretted and was responsible for Conway’s firing. The company replied, “We deeply regret the hardships Lynn has suffered.” Communicate to reach a formal solution in two months.

In early October, IBM emailed employees inviting them to attend a virtual event called “Technical Pioneer and Transgender Pioneer Lynn Conway Dialogue with Diane Gherson”. It is reported that Gherson is IBM’s senior vice president of human resources and reports directly to the CEO. As many IBM employees thought this meeting would be a discussion of Conway’s computer science breakthroughs, no further details were disclosed. On the day of the event, more than 1,200 IBM employees attended the online meeting.

At the start of the event, Gherson sincerely apologized for firing Conway. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and other senior executives have agreed to recognize and reward Conway’s technical achievements throughout his work at IBM and throughout his career.

Dario Gil, IBM research director, announced the award online. He said: “Lynn recently received the rare IBM Lifetime Achievement Award, which is given to people who changed the world through technological inventions. Lynn’s extraordinary technological achievements have helped define the modern computer industry. She designed how we design today. . It pioneered the production of computer chips and changed microelectronics, equipment and people’s lives forever. “

Additionally, the company admitted that after Conway left in 1968, her research helped the company succeed.

This virtual event and the accompanying apologies and rewards were widely praised by attendees. Conway said, “This is not just a solution to what happened in 1968, but a sincere collective celebration of the progress we have made since then.”