29 Facts About Lynn Conway

Lynn Ann Conway was an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, and transgender activist.

Lynn Conway worked at Xerox PARC from 1973 to 1983, where she led the "LSI Systems" group.

Lynn Conway joined the University of Michigan as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science in 1985.

Lynn Conway retired from active teaching and research in 1998 as professor emerita.

Lynn Conway began publicly discussing her gender transition in 1999 and was a transgender activist until her death in 2024.

Lynn Conway was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on January 2,1938 to Christine Alice Savage and Rufus Savage.

Lynn Conway became fascinated by astronomy and did well in math and science in school.

Lynn Conway was recruited by IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York, in 1964, and was selected to join the architecture team designing an advanced supercomputer, working alongside John Cocke, Brian Randell, Herbert Schorr, Ed Sussenguth, Fran Allen and other IBM researchers on the Advanced Computing Systems project, inventing multiple-issue out-of-order dynamic instruction scheduling while working there.

In 2020, IBM publicly apologized to Lynn Conway for firing her at a public event with Diane Gherson, then IBM's senior vice president of human relations.

At the event, Lynn Conway was awarded the IBM Lifetime Achievement Award for her work at IBM and later work.

Lynn Conway joined Xerox PARC in 1973, where she led the "LSI Systems" group under Bert Sutherland.

When in PARC, Lynn Conway founded the multiproject wafers technology.

Mead and Lynn Conway received Electronics magazine's annual award of achievement in 1981.

Mead-Lynn Conway's methods came under ethnographic study in 1980 by PARC anthropologist Lucy Suchman, who published her interviews with Lynn Conway in 2021.

In 1983, Lynn Conway left Xerox to join DARPA, where she was a key architect of the United States Department of Defense's Strategic Computing Initiative.

Lynn Conway joined the University of Michigan in 1985 as professor of electrical engineering and computer science and associate dean of engineering.

Lynn Conway retired from active teaching and research in 1998 as professor emerita at Michigan.

In 2023, Lynn Conway collaborated with Jim Boulton to create Lines in the Sand, a short comic book that tells the story of the invention VLSI.

When nearing retirement, Lynn Conway learned that the story of her early work at IBM might soon be revealed through the investigations of Mark Smotherman that were being prepared for a 2001 publication.

Lynn Conway began coming out in 1999 to friends and colleagues about her gender transition, using her website to tell her story.

Lynn Conway provided assistance to numerous other transgender women and maintained a website providing medical resources and emotional advice.

Lynn Conway advocated for equal opportunities and employment protections for transgender people in high-technology industry, and for elimination of the pathologization of transgender people by the psychiatric community.

Alice Dreger, in her book Galileo's Middle Finger, criticized Lynn Conway for filing a lawsuit against Bailey.

Lynn Conway alleged Bailey lacked a clinical psychologist license when he wrote letters in support of a young trans woman seeking to transition.

Lynn Conway was a cast member in the first all-transgender performance of The Vagina Monologues in Los Angeles in 2004, and appeared in a Logo documentary film about that event entitled Beautiful Daughters.

In 2009, Lynn Conway was named one of the "Stonewall 40 trans heroes" on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots by the International Court System and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Lynn Conway married a woman in 1963, and they had two daughters together.

In 1987, Lynn Conway met her husband Charles "Charlie" Rogers, a professional engineer who shared her interest in the outdoors, including whitewater canoeing and motocross racing.

Lynn Conway died from a heart condition at her home on June 9,2024, at the age of 86.