Conversation

In 1978, a woman launched a global microchip revolution, and then disappeared from history.

Lynn Conway was born in Mount Vernon, New York on January 2, 1938. She was a shy and introverted child who did well in math and sciences. However, she was also assigned male at birth and struggled with intense gender dysphoria.

Conway entered MIT in 1955, earning high grades but ultimately leaving in despair after an attempted gender transition failed due to the medical climate at the time. After working as an electronics technician for several years, she went back to school at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science, earning her B.S. and M.S.E.E. degrees in 1962 and 1963.

The following year, she was recruited by IBM and was soon selected to join the architecture team designing an advanced supercomputer. The project, called ACS, which stood for Advanced Computing Systems, has been described by historians as the world's first superscalar design, a computer architectural paradigm widely exploited in modern high-performance microprocessors.

In 1968, Lynn heard about the pioneering research of Harry Benjamin in healthcare for transgender women. And, realizing that gender affirmation surgery was now possible, Conway sought his help. Suffering from severe depression from gender dysphoria, Conway contacted Benjamin, who agreed to provide counseling and prescribe hormones. Under Benjamin's care, Conway began her medical gender transition. After the success of the ACS project, Lynn had hoped to be able to transition on the job, but IBM fired Conway immediately after she revealed her intention to transition.

So, in 1968, Conway restarted her career in computing, this time entering the field as a woman. She took a job at Computer Applications, Inc, then at Memorex, and then finally at Xerox in 1973. In her words, she was now in "stealth mode," under the not unfounded assumption that, should her past be discovered, she would be fired again.

In 1973, collaborating with Ivan Sutherland and Carver Mead of Caltech, Lynn co-developed a revolutionary new method of microchip design that allowed billions of individual components to be integrated into one chip with relative simplicity. Her design was called VLSI - or Very Large Scale Integration, and the importance of this invention cannot be understated in the modern world. Billions of digital devices worldwide, from iPhones to electronic cars to computerised coffee machines, were all made possible in part by her ideas. As the University of Michigan put it in 2014: "Thank Lynn Conway for your cell phone."

In 1978, she left Xerox and took a position at MIT, teaching a now famous course on VLSI design. While there, she co-authored "Introduction to VLSI Systems", with Carver Mead - a groundbreaking work that soon became a standard textbook in chip design, selling over 70,000 copies, and appearing in nearly 120 university curriculums by 1983. Basically, if you are in IT, and got your degree anywhere in America during the 80's you learned your trade, and owe your livelihood, in part, to a trans woman.

Following up on this, Lynn continued to be on the forefront of new technologies. The problem she was now trying to solve was how to cope with the increasing complexity of chip design. As the number of transistors per chip doubled every two years, keeping up with this required new ways to design and manufacture new microchips. In 1981, she invented dimensionless, scalable design rules that greatly simplified chip design, as well as a new form of internet-based infrastructure for rapid prototyping of new chip designs. This new infrastructure was called the Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service, or "MOSIS", and was funded in part by DARPA. Only two years into its success, Mead and Conway received Electronics Magazine's annual award of achievement. Since then, MOSIS has fabricated more than 50,000 circuit designs for commercial firms, government agencies, and research and educational institutions around the world.

Leaving MIT for DARPA, she became a key architect of the Defense Department's Strategic Computing Initiative, which was a research program studying high-performance computing, autonomous systems technology, and intelligent weapons technology. Working under Dr. Robert Cooper, Director of DARPA and Assistant Secretary of Defense, Conway led the effort that produced the Strategic Computing Plan published in November 1983.

Conway then joined the University of Michigan in 1985 as professor of electrical engineering and computer science and associate dean of engineering. It was here that, in 1987, Lynn met the man who would become her husband - Charles "Charlie" Rogers, a professional engineer who shared her interest in the outdoors, including whitewater canoeing and motocross racing. They started living together, and soon bought a house with 24 acres of meadow, marsh, and woodland in rural Michigan in 1994.

In 1998, Conway quietly retired from active teaching and research as professor emerita at Michigan, and four years later, on a beautiful bright day in August, Lynn and Charlie were married.

On June 9th of 2024, just 3 days ago, Lynn Conway passed away from a heart condition at her home in Jackson, Michigan, at the age of 86.

Lynn was a brilliant engineer and computer scientist, who never sought fame or recognition for her achievements and global contributions to the modern world. But, slowly, that recognition is coming to pass anyway. In 2009, she received an award from the engineering trade group, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE). In 2020, IBM finally apologized for firing her 42 years earlier. And, this past October, just 8 months before she died, Lynn Conway was inducted into the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame as the co-creator of VLSI – some 14 years after Carver Mead received the same honor.

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