{{short description|American computer scientist (born 1930)}} {{Infobox scientist | name = Judy Clapp | birth_name = Judith A. Clapp | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1930}} | birth_place = Long Island, New York | fields = Software engineering | workplaces = MITRE Corporation }}
'''Judith A. Clapp''' (born 1930) is a computer scientist who began her career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and subsequently moved to the Lincoln Laboratory and then to MITRE, where she was a leader in the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) military project, including the development of the SAGE computer.<ref name="clapp_abbate">{{cite interview |last=Clapp |first=Judy |interviewer=Janet Abbate |title=Oral History: Judy Clapp |work=IEEE History Center Oral History Program |url=http://ethw.org/Oral-History:Judy_Clapp |location=Lexington, MA |date=11 February 2001}}</ref>
==Early life and education== Clapp was born in 1930 and was raised in Long Island, New York. She received her bachelor's degree in math and physics in 1951 from Smith College and her master's degree in applied science (which she described as the closest match to computer science available at the time) in 1952 from Radcliffe College, then a women's affiliate of Harvard University.<ref name=clapp_abbate /><ref name=swe>{{cite web|title=SWE Awards: 2001 Achievement Award|url=http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/images/AwardRecipients/pr_achieveaward_clapp01.pdf|website=Society of Women Engineers|accessdate=1 September 2015|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304103756/http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/images/AwardRecipients/pr_achieveaward_clapp01.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>
==Career== After graduating from Radcliffe, Clapp began work at MIT, the only woman among the early programmers of the Whirlwind I, the first real-time computer. The Whirlwind, a vacuum tube computer, had originally been commissioned by the United States Navy but was subsequently financed by the Air Force for the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) project. Clapp continued to work on the project after its transfer to the Lincoln Laboratory and later to the MITRE Corporation, eventually becoming a Senior Principal Software Systems Engineer at MITRE. After the SAGE project Clapp continued to work in management at MITRE and participated in the Department of Defense Working Group that led to the development of the Ada programming language.<ref name=clapp_abbate /><ref name=swe /><ref>{{cite book|last1=Sloan|first1=editors, Mary Zeiss Stange, Carol K. Oyster, Jane E.|title=Encyclopedia of women in today's world|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediawome00zmar|url-access=limited|date=2011|publisher=Sage Reference|location=Thousand Oaks, Calif.|isbn=9781412976855|pages=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediawome00zmar/page/n387 323]–4}}</ref>
==Legacy==
Clapp's work is regarded as important groundwork for the development of software engineering as a discipline. She was involved in early professional organizations for women in computing and is recognized as a pioneer among women in the field.<ref name=acm>{{cite journal|last1=Denise|first1=Gürer|title=Pioneering Women in Computer Science|journal=Communications of the ACM|date=1995|volume=38|issue=1|pages=45–54|url=http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06au/readings/p175-gurer.pdf|doi=10.1145/204865.204875|s2cid=6626310}}</ref> Clapp received an Achievement Award from the Society of Women Engineers in 2001.<ref name=swe /> In 2005, she received the Smith College Medal.<ref>{{cite web|title=Smith History: The Smith College Medal|url=http://www.smith.edu/about_medalists.php|accessdate=May 10, 2016|archive-date=August 14, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160814003146/https://www.smith.edu/about-smith/smith-history/smith-college-medal|url-status=dead}}</ref> Her work and thoughts on working on the SAGE project were also discussed in the book Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Abbate|first=Janet|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GWOIXDsLQWwC&q=judy+clapp+mit|title=Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing|date=2012-10-19|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=978-0-262-30453-5|language=en}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [https://www.ll.mit.edu/about/History/reflections.html Reflections on SAGE]: MIT Lincoln Laboratory interviews Clapp and other major players in the SAGE project
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Clapp, Judy}} Category:1930 births Category:Living people Category:American women computer scientists Category:American computer scientists Category:Radcliffe College alumni Category:MIT Lincoln Laboratory people Category:Smith College alumni Category:21st-century American women Category:Achievement Award Recipients of the Society of Women Engineers