Category: UVM Extension

Happy Tuesday!

The holidays are here at the UVM Extension Office and we’re getting some housekeeping done before the break.

While cleaning out some cubicles I learned that the 4-H program  is the proud owner of 10 iPads that are leftover from a previous Tech Wizard grant.

Because of the mysterious iCloud and passwords that are long gone, I had the pleasure of wiping the units and starting over fresh for some brand new programming! I decided to give each iPad a name/wallpaper of a famous scientist. Pictured below are Katherine Johnson and Ada Lovelace.

Here’s the full list of the trailblazing ladies that will be honored as the backgrounds for our program iPads:

1. Ada Lovelace: An English mathematician and writer known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is regarded as the first computer programmer.
2. Katherine Johnson:  A mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. manned spaceflights.
3. Florence Nightingale: An English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing.
4. Grace Hopper: One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first compiler related tools. She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.
5. Radia Perlman: an American computer programmer and network engineer. She is most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges.
6. Roberta Bondar: Canada’s first female astronaut and the first neurologist in space.
7. Susan Kare: An artist and graphic designer who created many of the interface elements and typefaces for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also Creative Director (and one of the original employees) at NeXT, the company formed by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in 1985.
8. Adriana Ocampo: a Colombian planetary geologist and the Science Program Manager at NASA Headquarters. Her research contributed to the understanding of the Chicxulub impact crater
9. Annie Easley: A computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist. She was a leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage and one of the first African-Americans to work as a computer scientist at NASA.

10. Susan Wojcicki: CEO of Youtube. After overseeing Google Video for some time, Susan proposed that the company acquire Youtube (which at the time was a small startup). In 2006, she handled the $1.65 billion purchase.

Why just women you might ask? Why not!