Anita Borg

Anita Borg (January 17, 1949 – April 6, 2003) was an American computer scientist celebrated for advocating for women’s representation and professional advancement in technology. She founded the Institute for Women and Technology and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Education and early life Borg was born Anita Borg Naffz in Chicago, Illinois. She grew up in Palatine, Illinois; Kaneohe, Hawaii; and Mukilteo, Washington. Borg got her first programming job in 1969. Although she loved math while growing up, she did not originally intend to go into computer science and taught herself how to program while working at a small insurance company. She was awarded a PhD in Computer Science by New York University in 1981 for research investigating the synchronization efficiency of operating systems supervised by Robert Dewar and Gerald Belpaire. She died from brain cancer, in Sonoma, California on 6 April 2003. Career After receiving her PhD, Borg spent four years building a fault tolerant Unix-based operating system, first for Auragen Systems Corp. of New Jersey and then with Nixdorf Computer in Germany.