This image of a ca. 1974 LSI micro processor from the RCA Corporation's Solid State Division is being posted today in honor of the computer scientist, electrical engineer, pioneer of microelectronics chip design, and activist Lynn Ann Conway (1938-2024), who died last week at the age of 86.
While working for IBM in the 1960s, Conway invented generalized dynamic instruction handling, which is a method of issuing multiple out-of-order instructions to computing machines still used to improve the performance of computer processors. She was fired, however, in 1968, after revealing that she was transgender and planned to take a new name and avail herself of gender-affirming medical care.
IBM's loss was Xerox PARC's gain; after transitioning and some brief stints in other technology firms, she joined the company in 1973 in a leadership position for the LSI Systems working group, working alongside the engineer Carver Andress Mead. In the years that followed, the group spawned the Mead-Conway VSLI chip design revolution, a new approach to the design of computing technology that fundamentally shifted the field of research and industry. Mead and Conway's contributions allowed engineers to place multiple circuit designs from various sources onto a single silicon chip, enabling the creation of microchips and microelectronics, for which they were awarded the 1981 Achievement Award from Electronics.
In the years that followed, Conway's career featured designing computer infrastructure that was later adopted by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, serving as DARPA's assistant director for strategic computing, and a career at the University of Michigan as a professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and associate dean of engineering.
Her later years also saw her exit from what she called "stealth mode" to begin a legacy of activism for the rights of other transgender people. In 2020, IBM publicly apologized to her via a public forum in which she was awarded an IBM Lifetime Achievement Award.
To learn more about Lynn Conway, readers can consult a special issue of special edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine published in 2012 that features an extensive memoir by Conway, along with essays by her peers.
To learn more about this photograph, from our RCA Solid State Division records (Accession 2464.75) collection, you can visit it online in Hagley Library's Digital Archives by clicking here.