Frances Allen

Frances Allen was an American computer scientist who spent her long career at IBM Research and became one of the foremost pioneers of compiler optimization, the set of techniques a compiler uses to transform program code into a faster or more efficient form without changing what the program does. Allen's work in the 1960s and 1970s, including foundational papers on control flow analysis and program optimization, helped establish the mathematical and algorithmic basis that later compiler design across the industry built on, and she contributed to IBM projects including the Stretch-Harvest supercomputer and an early parallelizing compiler for the Parallel Translator project. She was also active in mentoring, including through IBM's Women in Technology programs, during a career in which women in computing research were rare. In 2006 Allen became the first woman to receive the Turing Award, honored for her pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques.