Sonja Sauvola Integration Specialist, Solita
Reading time 2 min
Have you seen the movie Hidden Figures? Did you know that many remarkable women in Europe have also shaped the history of computing? This blog series presents four women from the early 1900s to the present day. They are from Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. As the world of IT needs more women, it must be pointed out that this isn’t a field in which women are newcomers. In the words of Janet Abbate, this is a field where they have a history and belong.
Elsa-Karin Boestad-Nilsson (25.11.1925 – 27.3.2020) programmed the first computers in Sweden, BARK and BESK in the 1950s. Her story has clear parallels with the story of the ENIAC six, the women who programmed the first computers in the USA.
Boestad-Nilsson was the daughter of Mechanical Engineering Professor Gustav Boestad. She studied mathematics and physics at Stockholm University, graduating in 1948. After graduation, she worked at the Swedish Defence Research Agency.
At that time, mathematically educated women mostly worked as Calculation Assistants. Boestad-Nilsson’s initial work involved using mechanical calculators to solve problems in aerodynamics. She invented a mathematical method that shortened certain calculations, therefore speeding up the work.
When analog computers were imported from the US, Boestad-Nilsson took a course in computer programming. Generally, male researchers saw programming as dreary work and preferred that assistants programmed for them. Her initial work in this area was on BARK, the first programmable computer in Sweden. Sweden’s second computer, BESK, began operations in 1954, with Boestad-Nilsson as one of its initial programmers.
In 1957, Boestad-Nilsson was named Head of the Scientific Calculation Group at the Swedish National Defence Research Institute. In 1974, she was elected as Head of the Department of Mathematics and Data Processing.
At around this time, she became an activist for women’s rights after it was revealed that there was a personnel memo in the National Defence Research Institute that recommended paying all women employees equally low rates of pay in order to prevent women from becoming jealous of each other. She left the Institute in 1981 to work for an organisation promoting the use of the Ada programming language.
Elsa-Karin Boestad-Nilsson retired in 1990 and died in 2020.
Sonja Sauvola Integration Specialist, Solita