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* Engineer of the Year, National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientific and Technical Professionals, 2005<ref>[http://www.noglstp.org/2005awards.html "NOGLSTP to Honor Aberson, Conway, and Raytheon at Awards Ceremony in February"], Press Release, National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, Jan. 25, 2005.</ref>
* Engineer of the Year, National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientific and Technical Professionals, 2005<ref>[http://www.noglstp.org/2005awards.html "NOGLSTP to Honor Aberson, Conway, and Raytheon at Awards Ceremony in February"], Press Release, National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, Jan. 25, 2005.</ref>


==Transgender activism and controversy==
==Transgender activism==
{{See also|Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory controversy|The Man Who Would Be Queen}}


When nearing retirement, Conway learned that the story of her early work at IBM might soon be revealed. She began quietly [[coming out]] in 1999 to friends and colleagues about her past gender transition <ref name=BD06LC>[http://www.logoonline.com/shows/dyn/beautiful_daughters/personality.jhtml?personalityId=6829 “Beautiful Daughters Cast: Lynn Conway”], LOGO Channel, 2006</ref><ref name=ED03a>[http://electronicdesign.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=5836&pg=3 “Class Notes: 2002 Inductees: Here's how many of our 2002 Hall Of Famers enjoy their leisure time and how they still give back to society”], Doris Kilbane, Electronic Design, Oct. 20, 2003.</ref>, using her personal website <ref name=conI/> to tell the story in her own words. Her story was then more widely reported in 2000 in profiles in Scientific American <ref name=sciam00/> and the Los Angeles Times <ref=hiltzik/>.
⚫
Conway consciously went public with her story, 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 website listing many post-transition transsexual people whom she considers successful. Her website also provides current news related to transgender issues and information on [[sex reassignment surgery male-to-female|sex reassignment surgery for transsexual women]], [[facial feminization surgery]], academic inquiries into the [http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html| prevalence of transsexualism] and transgender/transsexual issues in general.


⚫
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 website listing many post-transition transsexual people whom she considers successful. Her website also provides current news related to transgender issues and information on [[sex reassignment surgery male-to-female|sex reassignment surgery for transsexual women]], [[facial feminization surgery]], academic inquiries into the [http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html| prevalence of transsexualism] and transgender/transsexual issues in general.
⚫
She has been a prominent critic of [[Ray Blanchard]]'s [[Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory|taxonomy]] of male-to-female transsexualism, calling question to their sources<ref name="Anjelica">[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Anjelica.html "Anjelica Kieltyka Responds to Bailey's Book"]</ref>, tactics, and analysis. She has objected to [[Ray Blanchard]]'s [[Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory|hypothesis]] that all [[transsexual women]] are motivated either by [[homosexual transsexual|feminine homosexuality]] or [[autogynephilia]].<ref name=carey>Carey, Benedict. ([[2007]]-[[08-21]].) [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html "Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege."] ''New York Times'' via nytimes.com. Retrieved on [[2007]]-[[09-19]].</ref> Conway has participated in an [[Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory controversy|academic debate]] over the issue.<ref name=carey/>

⚫
She has been a prominent critic of the [[Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory]] of male-to-female transsexualism. She objected to the [[Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory|hypothesis]] that all [[transsexual women]] are motivated either by [[homosexual transsexual|feminine homosexuality]] or [[autogynephilia]].<ref name=carey>Carey, Benedict. ([[2007]]-[[08-21]].) [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html "Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege."] ''New York Times'' via nytimes.com. Retrieved on [[2007]]-[[09-19]].</ref>

Conway was a cast member in the first all-[[transgender]] performance of [[The Vagina Monologues]], in [[Los Angeles]] in 2004 <ref name=VD04>[http://www.deepstealth.com/vday/ VDay LA 2004 Commemorative Page], DeepStealth Productions, Los Angeles CA, 2004.</ref>, and appeared in a LOGO-Channel documentary film about that event entitled Beautiful Daughters <ref name=BD06>[http://www.logoonline.com/shows/dyn/beautiful_daughters/series.jhtml “Beautiful Daughters”], a documentary by Josh Aronson and Ariel Orr Jordan, LOGO Channel, 2006.</ref>, <ref name=BD06LC/>. She has also strongly advocated for equal opportunities and employment protections for transgender people in high-technology industry <ref name=HP01>[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Media/HP/HP.html “Embracing Diversity - HP employees in Fort Collins, Colorado, welcome Dr. Lynn Conway”], hpNOW, Feb. 8, 2001.</ref>, <ref name=FCC01>[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Media/ColoradoanArticle/HP-CSU-lynncon.html “Computer pioneer speaks from the heart about diversity: Transsexual talks at HP, CSU”], by Kate Forgach, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Jan. 26, 2001.</ref>, <ref name=Adv01>[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Media/Advocate/Advocate.html “Chipping Away at Prejudice”], by Sarah Wildman, The Advocate, Mar. 13, 2001.</ref>, <ref name=Intel03>[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Media/Intel/iglobe.htm “What's pride got to do with it?”], by Teri Warner, Employee Communications, Circuit for Employees@Intel, Jul 1, 2003.</ref>, <ref name=PT03>[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Media/PersonnelToday/PersonnelToday_com%20-%20Why%20HR%20should%20wake%20up%20to%20the%20needs%20of%20transsexual%20employees.htm “Why HR should wake up to the needs of transsexual employees”], by Christine Burns, Personnel Today, Nov. 18, 2003.</ref>, <ref =RTN05>[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/O&E/Raytheon/Raytheon%20Adds%20GI&E.html “Another Milestone in the Journey: GI and E Added to EEO Policy”], Raytheon GLBTA NEWS, August – October 2005.</ref>.


==References==
==References==

Revision as of 04:21, 20 August 2008

Lynn Conway in July 2006

Lynn Conway (born 1938) is an American computer scientist, inventor, and transsexual activist.

Conway is notable for several technical achievements, including the Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI design, which incubated an emerging electronic design automation industry. She worked at IBM in the 1960s and is credited with the invention of generalised dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance.[1]

Early life and education

Born and raised as a boy, Conway grew up in White Plains, New York. Although shy and experiencing gender dysphoria as a child, she became fascinated and engaged by astronomy (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 University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, earning her B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963.[2]

Early research at IBM

Conway was recruited by IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1964. She was soon selected to join the architecture team designing an advanced supercomputer, working alongside John Cocke, 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.[3][1][4]

Gender transition

After learning of the pioneering research of Dr. Harry Benjamin in transgender treatment, Conway realized that she was a transsexual woman and that transition to a female gender role was possible. After suffering from severe depression over her situation, Conway contacted Dr. Benjamin, who agreed to counsel her and prescribe hormones. Conway had made an earlier transition attempt in the late 1950s which failed due to the medical climate at the time. Under Dr. Benjamin's care, she began preparing for transition.[5]

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 transitioning to a female gender role.

While struggling with life in a male role,[5] 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.[5]

After retiring from her professorship in December 1998, she gradually came to her friends as a transsexual woman in 1999, after she realized that the story of her IBM work might soon come out through the investigations of Mark Smotherman that were being prepared for a 2001 publication.[1]

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 Memorex during 1969–1972 as a digital system designer and computer architect.[5][6]

Conway joined Xerox PARC in 1973, where she led the "LSI Systems" group under Bert Sutherland.[7][8]. Collaborating with Carver Mead 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.[3] The book and early courses were the beginning of the Mead & Conway revolution in VLSI system design.

In 1978, Conway served as visiting associate professor of EECS at MIT, teaching a now famous VLSI design course based on a draft of the Mead–Conway text.[5] 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.[9]

Among Conway’s contributions were invention of dimensionless, scalable design rules that greatly simplified chip design and design tools,[10][11] and invention of a new form of internet-based infrastructure for rapid-prototyping and short-run fabrication of large numbers of chip designs.[12] The new infrastructure was institutionalized as the MOSIS 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.[13]

In the early 1980s, Conway left Xerox to join DARPA, where she was a key architect of the Defense Department's Strategic Computing Initiative, a research program studying high-performance computing, autonomous systems technology, and intelligent weapons technology.[10]

Conway joined the University of Michigan in 1985 as professor of electrical engineering and computer science, 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".[10] She retired from active teaching and research in 1998, as professor emerita at Michigan.[14]

Awards and honors

Conway has received a number of awards and distinctions:

Transgender activism

When nearing retirement, Conway learned that the story of her early work at IBM might soon be revealed. She began quietly coming out in 1999 to friends and colleagues about her past gender transition [25][26], using her personal website [2] to tell the story in her own words. Her story was then more widely reported in 2000 in profiles in Scientific American [3] and the Los Angeles Times <ref=hiltzik/>.

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 website listing many post-transition transsexual people whom she considers successful. Her website also provides current news related to transgender issues and information on sex reassignment surgery for transsexual women, facial feminization surgery, academic inquiries into the prevalence of transsexualism and transgender/transsexual issues in general.

She has been a prominent critic of the Blanchard, Bailey, and Lawrence theory of male-to-female transsexualism. She objected to the hypothesis that all transsexual women are motivated either by feminine homosexuality or autogynephilia.[27]

Conway was a cast member in the first all-transgender performance of The Vagina Monologues, in Los Angeles in 2004 [28], and appeared in a LOGO-Channel documentary film about that event entitled Beautiful Daughters [29], [25]. She has also strongly advocated for equal opportunities and employment protections for transgender people in high-technology industry [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35].

References

  1. ^ a b c Mark Smotherman. "IBM Advanced Computing Systems (ACS) -- 1961–1969".
  2. ^ a b Lynn Conway, "Lynn Conway's Retrospective Part I: Childhood and education," 9 Feb. 2005.
  3. ^ a b c Paul Wallich, "Profile: Lynn Conway—Completing the Circuit," Scientific American Magazine, December 2000.
  4. ^ Dianne Lynch, "The Secret Behind 'Project Y': One Woman’s Success Story — 'What Works, Works'", ABCNews.com, Nov. 29, 2001.
  5. ^ a b c d e Hiltzik, Michael A. (2000-11-19.) "Through the Gender Labyrinth.". Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, page 1. (Free reprint. Retrieved on 2007-09-19.)
  6. ^ Lynn Conway's Retrospective PART III: Starting Over
  7. ^ Adele J. Goldberg (September 1980). "About This Issue…". ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR). 12 (3): 257–258. doi:10.1145/356819.356820. ISSN 0360-0300.
  8. ^ Rob Walker and Nancy Tersini (1992). Silicon Destiny: The Story of Application Specific Integrated Circuits and LSI Logic Corporation. Walker Research Associates. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |ibsn= ignored (help)
  9. ^ The MIT'78 VLSI System Design Course: A Guidebook for the Instructor of VLSI System Design, Lynn Conway, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, August 12, 1979.
  10. ^ a b c Kilbane, Doris. (2003-10-20.) "Lynn Conway: A trailblazer on professional, personal levels." Electronic Design, via electronic design.com. Retrieved on 2007-09-24.
  11. ^ Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark (2000). Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. MIT Press. ISBN 0262024667.
  12. ^ National Research Council (1999), Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research, National Academy Press (excerpt)
  13. ^ "The MOSIS Service - More than 50,000 designs in 25 years of operation", MOSIS Website, 2008.
  14. ^ "Lynn Conway awarded Emerita status at the University of Michigan", December 31, 1998
  15. ^ "The 1981 Achievement Award – Lynn Conway, Carver Mead" by Martin Marshall, Larry Waller, and Howard Wolff, Electronics, Oct. 20, 1981
  16. ^ Penn Engineering: The Harold Pender Award
  17. ^ IEEE Alphabetical Listing of Fellows
  18. ^ "Franklin Institute honors eight physicists", Physics Today, July 1985.
  19. ^ NAE Member Directory, Section 05. (year from The White House Office of the Press Secretary)
  20. ^ Society of Women Engineers: Achievement Award Winners.
  21. ^ President Clinton Names Lynn Conway to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors", The White House Office of the Press Secretary, January 31, 1996.
  22. ^ "100 years of engineering excellence", Trinity Reporter, Trinigy College, Hartford, CN, Winter 98.
  23. ^ "Electronic Design Hall of Fame – 2002 Inductees", Electronic Design, Oct. 21, 2002.
  24. ^ "NOGLSTP to Honor Aberson, Conway, and Raytheon at Awards Ceremony in February", Press Release, National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, Jan. 25, 2005.
  25. ^ a b “Beautiful Daughters Cast: Lynn Conway”, LOGO Channel, 2006
  26. ^ “Class Notes: 2002 Inductees: Here's how many of our 2002 Hall Of Famers enjoy their leisure time and how they still give back to society”, Doris Kilbane, Electronic Design, Oct. 20, 2003.
  27. ^ Carey, Benedict. (2007-08-21.) "Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege." New York Times via nytimes.com. Retrieved on 2007-09-19.
  28. ^ VDay LA 2004 Commemorative Page, DeepStealth Productions, Los Angeles CA, 2004.
  29. ^ “Beautiful Daughters”, a documentary by Josh Aronson and Ariel Orr Jordan, LOGO Channel, 2006.
  30. ^ “Embracing Diversity - HP employees in Fort Collins, Colorado, welcome Dr. Lynn Conway”, hpNOW, Feb. 8, 2001.
  31. ^ “Computer pioneer speaks from the heart about diversity: Transsexual talks at HP, CSU”, by Kate Forgach, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Jan. 26, 2001.
  32. ^ “Chipping Away at Prejudice”, by Sarah Wildman, The Advocate, Mar. 13, 2001.
  33. ^ “What's pride got to do with it?”, by Teri Warner, Employee Communications, Circuit for Employees@Intel, Jul 1, 2003.
  34. ^ “Why HR should wake up to the needs of transsexual employees”, by Christine Burns, Personnel Today, Nov. 18, 2003.
  35. ^ “Another Milestone in the Journey: GI and E Added to EEO Policy”, Raytheon GLBTA NEWS, August – October 2005.

External links

  • Lynn Conway's website – primarily written in English, but many articles are provided in other languages as well.
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