Erna Schneider Hoover (born 1926, nee Schneider) is an American mathematician notable for inventing a computerized telephone switching method which "revolutionized modern communication"
She earned her PhD in Mathematics from Yale University in 1951, at a time when only 5% of the students who did so were women.Unable to secure teaching/academic posts (possibly due to her gender and marital status, in 1954, she joined Bell Telephone Laboratories as a researcher, where she worked for 37 years. After being promoted, Erna entered Bell Labs’ internal training programme in 1957 – viewed as the equivalent of a master’s degree in computer science. In the mid 1950s, in order to deal with the increasing volume incoming telephone calls for the manual electronic telephone switching systems, Erna developed a computer program, the Stored Program Control, (SPC).
The first SPC system went into service in 1963 and Today and Erna’s patented system is still in service today. The internet even uses SPC to route the billions of emails sent each day.
She was awarded one of the first patents for computer software. She was elected as a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2008. She received the Wellesley College alumni achievement award. In 2020, the College of New Jersey awarded her an honorary degree for services to higher education in New Jersey, after her time on their board. Schneider Hoover was the recipient of the National Center for Women & Information Technology's 2023 Pioneer Award
Text lifted from Wikipedia and the Amberly Museum, the Southern Industrial History Centre, Sussex
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