HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Gloria Gordon Bolotsky
OR:
Gloria Gordon Bolotsky on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

Gloria Gordon Bolotsky (July 28, 1921 – June 30, 2009) was an American computer scientist, one of the early programmers of the
ENIAC ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
computer.


Early life

Gloria Ruth Gordon was born in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. She attended a nursing school, but eventually graduated with a degree in mathematics from Brooklyn College. She married her husband, Max Bolotsky, a metallurgist, in 1948. They raised their family in Rockville, Maryland. They had five daughters.


Career

Gordon worked at the
Brooklyn Navy Yard The Brooklyn Navy Yard (originally known as the New York Navy Yard) is a shipyard and industrial complex located in northwest Brooklyn in New York City, New York. The Navy Yard is located on the East River in Wallabout Bay, a semicircular bend ...
as a mathematician before moving to Philadelphia to join the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
's engineering school in the 1940s. She was part of a team of around a hundred scientists who participated in the programming of the ENIAC computer, which was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the US Army. The initial programming had been done by six women. In 1946, ''
Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
'' magazine published a photograph of the ENIAC with two women working on it. Although the women were not identified at the time, the woman crouching was later revealed to be Gordon, while the other one was co-worker Ester Gerston. From Philadelphia, she was hired to a secret group at the
Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work a ...
in Maryland in 1947. In the 1950s, Gloria Bolotsky worked as a high school mathematics teacher in
Towson Towson () is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 55,197 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Baltimore County and the second-most populous unincorp ...
for a year. In 1963, she joined the
National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
in Gaithersburg, where she worked for the next twenty years. Her contributions included computer networking, embedding networks in telecommunications systems, and cost optimization techniques.


Later life

Gloria Bolotsky's husband died in 1998 after forty-nine years of marriage. She died of cancer on June 30, 2009, in
Gaithersburg, Maryland Gaithersburg ( ), officially the City of Gaithersburg, is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, Gaithersburg had a population of 69,657, making it the ninth-largest location in the state. Gai ...
. She was interred at King David Memorial Gardens, Falls Church, Virginia.


Selected publications

* * *


References


Further reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bolotsky, Gloria Gordon 1921 births 2009 deaths Scientists from Brooklyn Brooklyn College alumni American computer scientists American women computer scientists 20th-century American women scientists 20th-century American scientists Scientists from New York (state) 20th-century American mathematicians 20th-century women mathematicians American women mathematicians 21st-century American women