Beatrice Worsley

Beatrice Worsley
Born
Beatrice Helen Worsley

(1921-10-18)18 October 1921
Died8 May 1972(1972-05-08) (aged 50)
Resting placeMount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Canada
Other namesTrixie
Alma mater
Known forEarly PhD in computing, first program run on EDSAC
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
ThesisSerial Programming for Real and Idealised Digital Calculating Machines (submitted 1952; awarded 1954)
Doctoral advisor

Beatrice Helen Worsley (18 October 1921 – 8 May 1972), better known as "Trixie" Worsely, was a Canadian computer scientist, the first woman in the country to work in that profession. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge with Douglas Hartree as adviser, also with advice from Alan Turing, one of the earliest Ph.D.s to be granted in what would today be known as computer science, in parallel with David Wheeler's Ph.D. studies at Cambridge under Maurice Wilkes. She wrote the first program to run on EDSAC, co-wrote the first compiler for Toronto's Ferranti Mark 1, wrote numerous papers in computer science, and taught computers and engineering at Queen's University and the University of Toronto for over 20 years before her death at the early age of 50.