Lynn Conway

Lynn Ann Conway (born January 2, 1938) is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer and transgender activist.

She worked at IBM in the 1960s and invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance. She initiated the Mead-Conway VLSI chip design revolution in very large scale integrated (VLSI) microchip design. That revolution spread rapidly through the research universities and computing industries during the 1980s, incubating an emerging electronic design automation industry, spawning the modern 'foundry' infrastructure for chip design and production, and triggering a rush of impactful high-tech startups in the 1980s and 1990s."Lynn Conway: 2009 Computer Pioneer Award Recipient"
, IEEE Computer Society, January 20, 2010., July 30, 2010."Event: IBM ACS System: A Pioneering Supercomputer Project of the 1960s"
Computer History Museum, February 18, 2010."Computer History Museum Events: IBM ACS System: A Pioneering Supercomputer Project of the 1960s"
, Computer History Museum, February 18, 2010."Historical Reflections: IBM's Single-Processor Supercomputer Efforts – Insights on the pioneering IBM Stretch and ACS projects" by M. Smotherman and D. Spicer
''Communications of the ACM'', Vol. 53, No. 12, December 2010, pp. 28–30.

Early life and education

Conway grew up in White Plains, New York. Conway was shy and experienced gender dysphoria as a child. She became fascinated by astronomy (building a reflector telescope one summer) and did well in math and science in high school. Conway entered MIT in 1955, earning high grades but ultimately leaving in despair after an attempted gender transition in 1957–58 failed due to the medical climate at the time. After working as an electronics technician for several years, Conway resumed education at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, earning B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963.Lynn Conway,
Lynn Conway's Retrospective Part I: Childhood and education
" February 9, 2005.

Early research at IBM

Conway was recruited by IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1964, and was soon selected to join the architecture team designing an advanced supercomputer, working alongside John Cocke, Brian Randell, Herbert Schorr, Ed Sussenguth, Fran Allen and other IBM researchers on the Advanced Computing Systems (ACS) project, inventing multiple-issue out-of-order dynamic instruction scheduling while working there.Paul Wallich,
Profile: Lynn Conway—Completing the Circuit
," Scientific American, December 2000.Dianne Lynch,

, ABCNews.com, November 29, 2001. The Computer History Museum has stated that "the ACS machines appears to have been the first superscalar design, a computer architectural paradigm widely exploited in modern high-performance microprocessors."

Gender transition

After learning of the pioneering research of Harry Benjamin in treating transsexual women and realising that gender affirmation surgery was now possible, Conway sought his help and became his patient. After suffering from severe depression from gender dysphoria, Conway contacted Benjamin, who agreed to provide counseling and prescribe hormones. Under Benjamin's care, Conway began her medical gender transition.Hiltzik, Michael A. (November 19, 2000.
"Through the Gender Labyrinth."
. ''Los Angeles Times'', Los Angeles Times Magazine, page 1.
Free reprint
Retrieved on September 19, 2007.)

While struggling with life in a male role, Conway had been married to a woman and had two children. Under the legal constraints then in place, she was denied access to their children after transitioning.

Although she had hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition. IBM apologized for this in 2020.

Career as computer scientist

Upon completing her transition in 1968, Conway took a new name and identity, and restarted her career in what she called " 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.

Conway joined Xerox PARC in 1973, where she led the " LSI Systems" group under Bert Sutherland. When in PARC, Conway founded the "multiproject wafers" (MPW). This new technology made it possible to pack multiple circuit designs from various sources into one single chip. Her new invention increased production and decreased costs. Collaborating with Ivan Sutherland and 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 nearly 120 universities by 1983.Paul Wallich,
Profile: Lynn Conway—Completing the Circuit
" Scientific American, December 2000.Gina Smith
Unsung innovators: Lynn Conway and Carver Mead: They literally wrote the book on chip design
," Computerworld, December 3, 2007. With over 70,000 copies sold, and the new integration of her MPC79/MOSIS innovations, the Mead and Conway revolution became part of VLSI design.

In 1978, Conway served as visiting associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, teaching a now famous VLSI design course based on a draft of the Mead–Conway text. The course validated the new design methods and textbook, and established the syllabus and instructor's guidebook used in later courses worldwide.Paul Penfiel
"The VLSI Revolution at MIT" by Paul Penfield
''2014 MIT EECS Connector'', Spring 2014, pp. 11–13.

Among Conway's contributions were the invention of dimensionless, scalable design rules that greatly simplified chip design and design tools, and invention of a new form of internet-based infrastructure for rapid prototyping and short-run fabrication of large numbers of chip designs.National Research Council (1999), ''Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research'', National Academy Press
excerpt
The new infrastructure was institutionalized as the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service (MOSIS) system in 1981. Two years into its success, Mead and Conway received ''Electronics'' magazine's annual award of achievement. Since then, MOSIS has fabricated more than 50,000 circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and research and educational institutions around the world. VLSI researcher Charles Seitz commented that "MOSIS represented the first period since the pioneering work of Eckert and Mauchley on the ENIAC in the late 1940s that universities and small companies had access to state-of-the-art digital technology."

The research methods used to develop the Mead–Conway VLSI design methodology and the MOSIS prototype are documented in a 1981 Xerox report and the Euromicro Journal.''THE MPC Adventures: Experiences with the Generation of VLSI Design and Implementation Methodologies''
by Lynn Conway, Microprocessing and Microprogramming – The Euromicro Journal, Vol. 10, No. 4, November 1982, pp 209–228. The impact of the Mead–Conway work is described in a number of historical overviews of computing.''Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology''
by Committee on Criteria for Federal Support of Research and Development, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1995, page 75.
by Committee to Study High Performance Computing and Communications: Status of a Major Initiative, National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington DC, 1995, page 20. Conway and her colleagues have compiled an online archive of original papers that documents much of that work.
The VLSI Archive
' , by Lynn Conway, Electronic Design News, June 3, 2009. The methods also came under ethnographic study in 1980 by PARC anthropologist Lucy Suchman, who published her interviews with Conway in 2021.

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.Kilbane, Doris. (October 20, 2003.
"Lynn Conway: A trailblazer on professional, personal levels."
''Electronic Design'', via electronic design.com. Retrieved on September 24, 2007.Dwight B. Davi
"Assessing the Stragetic Computing Initiative," by Dwight B. Davis
''High Technology'', Vol. 5, No. 4, April 1985.

In a ''USA Today'' article about Conway's joining DARPA, Mark Stefik, a Xerox scientist who worked with her, said "Lynn would like to live five lives in the course of one life" and that she's "charismatic and very energetic"."Hi-tech researcher chips in to develop smart computer"
Michelle Osborn, USA Today, June 7, 1983, p. 3B. Douglas Fairbairn, a former Xerox associate, said "She figures out a way so that everybody wins."

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". She retired from active teaching and research in 1998, as professor emerita at Michigan."Lynn Conway awarded Emerita status at the University of Michigan"
December 31, 1998

Legacy

As sociologist Thomas Streeter discusses in The Net Effect:"The Net Effect, Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet"
Thomas Steeter, New York University Press, 2011, p, 101."On Streeter's The Net Effect: A Culture Digitally Dialogue"
Gina Neff, Mary Gray, and Thomas Streeter, April 25, 2013. "By taking this job, Conway was demonstrating that she was no antiwar liberal. (In response to critics, she has said, 'if you have to fight, and sometimes you must in order to deal with bad people, history tells us that it really helps to have the best weapons available)". But Conway carried a sense of computers as tools for horizontal communications that she had absorbed at PARC right into DARPA – at one of the hottest moments of the cold war."

In the fall of 2012, the IEEE published a special issue of the ''IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits'' devoted to Lynn Conway's career,"Solid-State Circuits Publishes Special Issue with Lynn Conway's Memoir of the VLSI Revolution"
Michigan EECS News, January 31, 2013. including a career memoir by Conway and peer commentaries by Chuck House, former Director of Engineering at HP, Carlo Séquin, Professor of EECS at U.C. Berkeley, and Ken Shepard, of Columbia University. Subsequently the scope of Conway's contributions gained wider retrospective attention. "Since I didn't #LookLikeanEngineer, few people caught on to what I was really doing back in the 70s and 80s," says Conway.

"Clearly a new paradigm had emerged ... Importantly, imaginative support in terms of infrastructure and idea dissemination proved as valuable as the concepts, tools, and chips. The "electronic book" and the "foundry" were both prescient and necessary, providing momentum and proof-points." James F. "Jim" Gibbons, former dean of engineering at Stanford University, further states that Lynn Conway, from his perspective, "...was the singular force behind the entire 'foundry' development that emerged." Kenneth Shepard, Professor of Biomedical and Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, stated that "Lynn's amazing story of accomplishment and personal triumph in the face of personal adversity and overt discrimination should serve as an inspiration to all young engineers."

In 2020, NAE President John L. Anderson stated that "Lynn Conway is not only a revolutionary pioneer in the design of VLSI systems ... But just as important, Lynn has been very brave in telling her own story, and her perseverance has been a reminder to society that it should not be blind to the innovations of women, people of color, or others who don't fit long outdated – but unfortunately, persistent – perceptions of what an engineer looks like."

Transgender activism

When nearing retirement, Conway learned that the story of her early work at IBM might soon be revealed through the investigations of Mark Smotherman that were being prepared for a 2001 publication. She began quietly coming out in 1999 to friends and colleagues about her past gender transition,"Beautiful Daughters Cast: Lynn Conway"
LOGO Channel, 2006"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, October 20, 2003."Secrets Are Out: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender engineers are no longer willing to hide their true selves"
Jaimie Schock, Prism Magazine, American Society of Engineering Education, October 2011, pp. 44–47. using her personal website to tell the story in her own words. Her story was then more widely reported in 2000 in profiles in ''Scientific American'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. In a later ''Forbes'' interview, Conway commented "From the 1970s to 1999 I was recognized as breaking the gender barrier in the computer science field as a woman, but in 2000 it became the transgender barrier I was breaking."

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 transgender people. She has provided direct and indirect assistance to numerous other transgender women going through transition and maintains a website providing medical resources and emotional advice. Parts have been translated into most of the world's major languages. She maintained a listing of many successful post-transition transgender people, to, in her words "provide role models for individuals who are facing gender transition". Her website also provided news related to transgender issues and information on sex reassignment surgery for transsexual women, facial feminization surgery, academic inquiries into the prevalence of transsexualismOlyslager F, Conway L (2008)
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