Google has a great blog post and YouTube video about Jean Bartik a true pioneer in the field of Computer Science. I hadn’t heard of Jean before today, but this video interview of her being inducted into the Computer History Museum is great, truly inspirational. For those that know me, you’d agree that I don’t use happy, warm, fuzzy terms like inspirational,well, ever. Seriously, go watch the video.

Born on a farm in Missouri, the sixth of seven children, Jean Jennings Bartik always went in search of adventure. Bartik majored in mathematics at Northwest Missouri State Teachers College (now Northwest Missouri State University). During her college years, WWII broke out, and in 1945, at age 20, Bartik answered the government’s call for women math majors to join a project in Philadelphia calculating ballistics firing tables for the artillery developed for the war effort. A new employee of the Army’s Ballistics Research Labs, she joined over 80 women calculating ballistics trajectories (differential calculus equations) by hand - her job title: “Computer”….