The tech industry is dominated by white, heterosexual men. There is an under-representation of women but the numbers are even worse if we start talking about non-white people or people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community.
In honor of Cyprus Pride happening today (May 27th, 2023), let's talk about some giants of the tech industry who also belong to the LGBTQ+ community:
Alan Turing (1912-1954): English computer scientist, mathematician, and cryptanalyst
Alan Turing is the “father” of computer science. In 1936 he invented the “Turing Machine”. A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation describing an abstract machine that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules and it is capable of implementing any computer algorithm. During World War II, he played a key role in the development of a technique to decipher encrypted German messages - this story is told in the movie “The Imitation Game”. After the war he developed the blueprint for stored-program computers. At the University of Manchester he pioneered the first steps of Artificial Intelligence and developed an experiment to test when AI will be equivalent to human intellect. We know it as the “Turing Test” but he called it the imitation game. Despite all his contributions his life had a tragic ending: he was arrested and prosecuted for “gross indecency” when authorities discovered he was gay. Forced to take hormones to “correct” him, he committed suicide by ingesting cyanide and died at the age of 41. Today, the most prestigious award in computer science, the Turing Award is named in his honour.
Lynn Conway (b. 1938): American computer scientist
Lynn Conway is a pioneer of microchip design. Lynn began her life as man. After graduating from MIT and Columbia University, she was recruited by IBM in 1964. At IBM she was in a team building an advanced supercomputer and invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, a key advance used in out-of-order execution, used by most modern computer processors to improve performance. IBM fired Conway when she started going through transition because she revealed her intention to live as a woman. Conway then had to begin from scratch with a new name and rebuild her career. In the second part of her career, she worked for Xerox PARC and DARPA. In 1979 she initiated the Mead–Conway VLSI chip design revolution in very large scale integrated (VLSI) microchip design when she published along with Caltech professor Carver Mead the book “Introduction to VLSI systems”. The textbook triggered a breakthrough in education, as well as in industry practice. Computer science and electrical engineering professors throughout the world started teaching VLSI system design using it along with a copy of Lynn Conway's notes that included a collection of exercises from a course she taught at MIT in 1978.
In 2001 Conway learned that the story of her early work at IBM might soon be revealed through the investigations of Mark Smotherman so she decided to come out on her own terms. She used her personal website to tell her story. She later told Forbes: "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." In a different interview she commented: "When I made the decision to have a gender correction, everybody told me I was terrible, I was going to end up dead or in an asylum someplace. But they were wrong. I’ve had a great life, I’m very happy, and I’ve managed to do some productive, important work."
Sophie Wilson (b. 1957): British computer scientist
Sophie Wilson was born Roger Wilson and was raised in Leeds, Yorkshire. She studied computer science at Cambridge University. In 1977, while on summer vacation she designed a microcomputer used to control feed for cows. She went on to work for Acorn Computers. There she first designed the Acorn System 1, an early 8-bit computer released in 1979. Subsequently, with her colleague Steve Furber, they designed and implemented the BBC Microcomputer which was a huge commercial success as more than a million BBC Micros were sold and used in thousands of schools in the UK. Wilson and Furber then co-designed the 32-bit Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processor in 1985. The processor was used in the second generation of BBC Micro, Acorn's first general-purpose home computer named Archimedes and Apple Computer's first personal digital assistant, the Newton in 1993. If the name ARM sounds familiar is because the ARM processor core is currently used in thousands of different products, from mobile phones and tablets to digital televisions and video games. Almost every single smartphone on the planet is using an ARM processor. In 1994 transitioned from male to female. She is now the Director of IC Design in Broadcom's Cambridge, UK office.
Jon "maddog" Hall (b 1950): Chairman of Linux Professional Institute
Jon Hall has a long and successful career and has worked for Western Electric Corporation, Aetna Life and Casualty, Bell Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), VA Linux Systems, and Silicon Graphics (SGI) and Koolu. The nickname "maddog" was given to him by his students at Hartford State Technical College, where he was the Department Head of Computer Science and according to him it "came from a time when I had less control over my temper". Hall chairs the board of directors for the Linux Professional Institute, a nonprofit that provides certification to open-source professionals. Hall came out as gay in 2012 in honor of the 100th birthday of Alan Turing by writing at article in the Linux Magazine stating: "Most of the people in my world of electronics and computers were like the mathematicians of Alan Turings' time, highly educated and not really caring whether their compatriots were homosexual or not, or at least looking beyond the sexuality and seeing the rest of the person."
Tim Cook (b 1960): CEO of Apple
Tim Cook , the CEO of Apple lived most of his life keeping his private life, private. Not even Steve Jobs knew he is gay at the beginning and was trying to setup dates with women for him. He was named Apple's CEO in August 2011, and previously served as the company's chief operating officer.
In June 2014, Cook attended San Francisco's gay pride parade along with a delegation of Apple staff and on October of the same year he published a personal essay at Bloomberg Businessweek coming out as gay. He said that while he wanted to continue to keep his private life to himself, he felt an "increasing sense of duty" to come out as his way to help the gay community.