Lynn Ann Conway is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, and transgender activist. Conway is notable for a number of pioneering achievements.
Born: January 2, 1938 (age 83 years).
Thousands of chip designers learned their craft from Lynn's textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems.
What no one knew till recently is that Lynn also did earlier pioneering research at IBM in the 1960's where she did groundbreaking work on computer architectural design. She paved the way for how we design and make computing chips today – and forever changed microelectronics, devices, and people's lives
Why why wasn't her work at IBM recognized as the outstanding achievements they were?
You see, Lynn is trans and began transitioning while working there.
When top IBM management learned what Lynn was doing, she was fired in a maelstrom of animosity and the 1960's version of hateful transphobia.
In 2020, 52 years after IBM fired her for being transgender, IBM officially and publicly apologized to Conway.
So the next time you are using your smartphone to chat, your laptop at work or school or even your computer controlled car, remember that none of that would be possible without the hard work of this woman...who happens to be TRANSGENDER.

Lynn Conway a professor of EECS, Emerita, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.//

I’m a computer scientist who revolutionized information technology by inventing new methods that greatly simplified the design and fabrication of complex microchips. During the late 1970s, I widely shared my knowledge with young people in STEM, both as a university professor and as an author of the seminal textbook on microchip engineering. My work paved the way for the modern microchips found in almost all high-technology systems, including computers, mobile phones, and the internet. Amazingly, I did that groundbreaking work in “stealth-mode” after secretly completing my gender transition in 1968. As I neared retirement in 1998, I quietly came out via the internet, and my website, lynnconway.com, quickly became a beacon of hope for transgender people world-wide. In 2012, I published a memoir revealing how—closeted and hidden behind the scenes—I conceived the ideas and orchestrated the events that disruptively changed an entire industry.