Lois B. Mitchell Haibt (born 1934) is an American computer scientist best known for being a member of the ten-person team at IBM that developed FORTRAN, the first successful high-level

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

. She is known as an early pioneer in computer science.

Education and career

Haibt studied mathematics at

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely foll ...

with an academic scholarship. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1955. While at Vassar, Haibt worked at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

during the summer. Immediately after graduating from Vassar, Haibt began working at IBM. She started with an annual salary of $5,100, despite her lack of prior programming experience. This sum was almost double the amount that she would have made at Bell Laboratories. Haibt inferred that any job with such a high salary would be difficult, but fascinating. She was part of an academically diverse team of ten young people with varying academic degrees and unrelated areas of expertise, such as crystallography and cryptography. Experience with mathematics was their one common connection. Haibt was the only woman on the team. According to Haibt, the team worked well together: "No one was worried about seeming stupid or possessive of his or her code. We were all just learning together." The FORTRAN team worked nontraditional hours so that they could have unlimited access to the IBM 704 computer. They frequently rented rooms at the nearby Langdon Hotel in order to sleep during the day and work at night. In 1957, Haibt attended

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. Haibt is a member of the Mathematical Association of America.

Research contributions

The IBM team spent almost three years creating the programming language FORTRAN, which reformed the way people communicate instructions to computers. Haibt was in charge of section four of the FORTRAN project. She analyzed the flow of programs produced by other sections of the

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...

. Her estimates of flow in high-traffic areas of the computer were obtained by calculating how often basic blocks of the program would execute. Haibt employed

Monte Carlo method Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be determi ...

s (statistical analysis) for these calculations. Through this process, she also created the first syntactic analyzer of arithmetic expressions. Haibt planned and programmed the entire section. Haibt was also part of an eleven-person team to develop and release the first reference manual for FORTRAN in 1956.

Personal life

Haibt was married to Luther Haibt (May 4, 1929 – December 3, 2000), a systems analyst at IBM in Thornwood, NY. The Haibts spent their adult lives in New York state. Haibt's daughter, Carolyn, attended

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

for her bachelor's degree and went on to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. Haibt's hobbies include interior decorating and reading.

Works

Original Paper on FORTRAN from 1957Casting Petri Nets into Programs, September 1983

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Haibt, Lois Living people American computer programmers Fortran Vassar College alumni American women computer scientists American computer scientists 1934 births People from Katonah, New York IBM employees 21st-century American women