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Computer Scientist Anita Borg Dies at 54

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 April 2003, 06:00 CDT

By MATTHEW FORDAHL

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Anita Borg, a pioneering computer scientist who worked to break the "silicon ceiling" that often kept women and minorities from rising to the top of the high-tech industry, has died. She was 54.

She died of brain cancer Sunday at her mother's home in Sonoma, Calif., according to the Institute for Women and Technology.

Borg was in her mid-20s when she decided to get a degree in programming, eventually receiving a Ph.D. in computer science from the Courant Institute at New York University in 1981. She held a number of jobs ranging from startups to Digital Equipment Corp.

While attending an industry conference in 1987, she noticed only a handful of women were present. With that group as a base, she started Systers, an e-mail group that provided support, mentoring and encouragement to women in computing.

Today, Systers has more than 2,500 members in 38 countries.

Borg, who was born in 1949 in Chicago, helped found the Grace Hopper Celebration in Computing conference, which focuses on the careers and research of women in the high-tech industry. It is held every other year and is now the largest gathering of women in computing.

In 1997, she founded the Institute for Women and Technology, which not only runs Systers and the Grace Hopper conferences but also works to heighten the impact of technology on women around the world.

"The chauvinism of the past and the present has been to go somewhere and say 'Here, buy these brilliant things,'" she told The Associated Press in a 2000 interview. "But if you want to think out of the box, why not talk to people who aren't in the box?"

She received the $250,000 Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment in February 2002. In July 1999, President Clinton appointed Borg to the Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering and Technology.

Borg also was a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and a member of the board of the Computing Research Association. In 1998 and 1999, she was a board member of the National Academy of Engineering's Committee on the Celebration of Women in Engineering.

Borg is survived by her husband, Winfried Wilcke of Los Altos Hills; a sister, Lee Naffz; and her mother, Beverly Naffz.

A private memorial is planned.

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