In the Margins

- Did you know that a transgender woman played a crucial role in shaping the modern computer?

The very device you're using right now owes a lot to Lynn Conway, whose groundbreaking work in microchip design revolutionized the technology we use every day.

Yet it took decades for her to receive the recognition she deserved.

This phenomenon, which Lynn herself described as the Conway Effect, highlights how people from marginalized groups often find their contributions to technology overlooked, simply because of their identity.

As a result, the contributions of women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ individuals often go unnoticed.

- I haven't just seen the Conway Effect, I've lived the Conway Effect.

The challenge sometimes is that when you are going into professional environment, that should be about professionalism and there's a focus on you not fitting into some perceived gender role.

- If you're not expected to innovate in that way and others around you were hypothetically expected to, they're gonna get the credit.

- Lynn's own words highlight this issue.

"I disappeared from history, and so did my innovations," but her story is about more than just erasure.

It's about a fierce battle for visibility.

I'm Harini Bhat, and this is "In The Margins".

The tech world has long been dominated by white men.

The 1970 US census shared that engineering, science, and tech roles were overwhelmingly held by men.

92% to be exact.

As of 2022, women in the US held 28% of computing and mathematical roles - For many years, tech companies decided that the way they were going to measure the effectiveness of diversity efforts was to count the employees who were black, brown, queer, trans, women, et cetera.

Success or failure was measured by those numbers growing or shrinking.

- Equal representation has always been a struggle, but it's not just about numbers, it's also about recognition, and no one knew that better than Lynn Conway born in Mount Vernon, New York in 1938, she described herself as a quiet and studious child, spending hours in libraries nurturing her love for discovery and adventure.

She went on to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fifties, but struggled with overwhelming gender dysphoria and eventually dropped out just months before graduation.

Determined, Lynn would continue her education in the sixties, earning a bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 1963.

By 1964, she joined IBM working on a secret project called Project Y to develop the world's most powerful supercomputer.

It was during this time that she invented dynamic instruction scheduling or DIS, a groundbreaking advancement in a computer's processing speed.

But in 1968, her life took a dramatic turn.

She was fired from IBM when executives learned of her plans to seek gender-affirming care.

Lynn's dismissal from IBM led to the loss of her income, her home, and her family.

Despite facing these setbacks alone, she became one of the first Americans to undergo gender-affirming care.

A few years later, in 1973, under a new identity, she began to work at a Xerox Research Center in Palo Alto, California.

It was here that she co-invented very large scale integration or VLSI.

VLSI revolutionized electronics by integrating thousands of transistors onto a single chip and allowed the circuits inside those devices to be smaller, faster, and more powerful.

It was a huge leap forward that allowed for the strength and portability of all our modern devices.

- None of the things that we are so dependent on today could have existed without dynamic construction scheduling and VLSI.

- Lynn's dismissal from IBM in the sixties led to her contributions to DIS being completely erased from history.

This innovation was widely used without giving her any credit.

For her invention of VLSI in the seventies, she and her co-inventor, Caltech Professor Carver Mead wrote a textbook on this new process for designing microchips.

Under a Lynn's leadership the text was adopted by scores of major computer science graduate programs, but over time, she became increasingly aware that her contributions were being erased and what came next would change Lynn's career forever.

In 2009, the Computer History Museum hosted a gala to honor the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit, a big part of which is the VLSI chip.

You know the invention that Lynn was instrumental in discovering?

Well, 15 men were honored at the ceremony and inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, including Carver Mead, and not only was Lynn not honored at the ceremony, she wasn't even invited.

This was the moment she realized and named what she called the Conway Effect.

Her theory introduced in her 2018 essay "The Disappeared: Beyond Winning and Losing" suggests that society tends to overlook innovations made by those who are not expected to be innovators like women, BIPOC, and the LGBTQ+ community.

Instead, attributing these breakthroughs to known innovators who fit the cultural mold.

Lynn's essay emphasized that for women to succeed in innovation, they must first be seen by society as capable of succeeding.

- If companies reject the constant invitation to build cultures that make space for marginalized people, it means they're committing to making those people invisible.

- It's a cultural shift that hasn't come easy.

Just consider some stories of other pioneering women in STEM who face similar challenges like Rosalind Franklin, whose work was crucial in discovering the DNA double helix structure.

Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, whose contributions were pivotal during NASA's space race and Dr. Gertrude Blanch and Ida Rhodes who create complex mathematical tables essential for scientific and military advancements.

All of their stories echo Lynn's experience of being overlooked or completely forgotten in their time.

- One of my fears when I started transitioning is just like, am I going to be at like an entry level position my entire life?

Because people are like, oh, you don't quite fit the mold or the image of what we have for like a leader in your space.

- Determined to reclaim her place in history, Lynn Conway took matters into her own hands.

Lynn came out as trans in 1999 and was finally able to take credit for her revolutionary work at IBM.

She also published meticulous documentation of her contributions at Xerox in a prestigious industry journal and her tireless advocacy paid off.

In 2014, she received recognition for her life's work with an honorary doctorate from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

In 2015, Lynn was honored with the James Clerk Maxwell Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 2020 IBM issued a formal apology for her firing and presented her with her lifetime achievement award.

- She's got a whole wall here of certificates and accomplishments, but I would say the most treasured one of all of those is the award IBM gave her the public recognition.

- Lynn reflected on her journey in her essay noting how she had to claw her way to reappearance due to a culture that silenced her.

Many since then have drawn inspiration for her story, working hard to ensure visibility for themselves and others.

- When I founded TransTech, I really just wanted to create a community of folks who understood the challenges and that we together shift the resources to the most marginalized.

To be able to illustrate that for our community and to watch our community find their place in this industry has been really, really amazing.

- We live in a time now to where like, I can go to work and be my authentic self and no one like looks down on me or treats me differently, and I think it's in a large part due to people like Lynn Conway who kind of like paved the road.

- [Harini] In 2023, Lynn was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame just before passing away in June, 2024.

- I met Lynn Conway years ago when I was first founding TransTech.

She said, what I need you to do is figure out how to take what you're trying to accomplish and create exponential growth.

- I think it's amazing and a testament to her strength that she took this career that she had built up and these amazing contributions and like she had to sacrifice those things so she could be her authentic self.

- Lynn Conway has made contributions that we in this technological world probably could not live without, so thank you Lynn Conway.

- The visibility that Lynn fought for continues to be a goal for many communities over 60 years later.

I hope you enjoyed this episode on Lynn Conway as much as I did.

Thanks so much for watching.

This is me and I love me, yeah This is me working on myself This is me can't stop me now Doing me my way cause I can This is me and I love me, yeah This is me working on myself This is me can't stop me now Doing me my way cause I can