Frances Allen receives 2006 Turing Award

The 2006 Turing Award has been given to Frances Allen. This is the first time that this honor has been awarded to a woman. See the ACM press release for details. I have to admit that I am not familiar with Frances Allen. Her background is in compiler design and program optimization, amongst other things. More information about Allen can be found on the IBM Women in technology site. (Hat tip to Suresh.)

I hadn't thought about it before, but I'm surprised that this is only the first time a woman has received the Turing Award. I would have expected that Grace Hopper, for one, would have been a recipient, but perhaps she passed away before the opportunity came up. Past Turing Award winners can be found here.

The Turing Award will be presented to Allen at a ceremony in June. I'm sure that her Turing lecture will be much more edifying than the previous recipient's.

Update

I just noticed that this entry was included in a blog round-up over on ComputerWorld, so if you found your way here from there, welcome. If you haven't already seen it, Mark Chu-Carroll has a personal recollection about Frances Allen over on Good Math, Bad Math. Another item worth checking out is an interview with Allen from 1996 by Ann Devlin. They talk about how the Web will streamline commerce and empower users, and it's kind of weird listening to this from a 10-year-old perspective.

Up-up-date

Also check out Lance Fortnow's blog entry. The post itself is minimal; but read the comments, and you can either weep or get angry as seems fit.