She was in a nursing home when she died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, her great-grandfather Ryan McKee told the New York Times.
Allen grew up on a farm in Peru, New York, and in 1954 received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from The New York State College for Teachers (now called SUNY Albany). After graduating, she became a teacher at a school in her hometown. Two years later, she enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she earned a master’s degree in mathematics in 1957.
After graduating, Allen took a job as a programmer for IBM Research, intending to stay with IBM long enough to pay off student loan debt. Nearly 45 years later, she retired from the company after spending her entire career there.
IBM called Allen “a pioneer in compiler organization and optimization algorithms”, in a memo posted on the company’s website. She made significant contributions to the field through her work on interprocessive analysis and automatic parallelization.
Their efforts helped “software designers generate more powerful and efficient code, leading to tremendous advances in the use of supercomputers and parallel processing, and ultimately in all levels of computing,” Allen reported in the Washington Post.
Allen was an IBM Fellow Emerita and a recipient of the prestigious Turing Award, an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to “an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computer community.” According to the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, a professional enrichment organization in the field, it is recognized as the “highest distinction in computer science.”
In 2006, Allen became the first woman to receive the award, IBM said.
In addition, Allen was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was a colleague of the Association of Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the Computer History Museum. She received two honorary doctorates and several awards for her work for women in computing.
She was also inducted into the International Hall of Fame for Women in Technology and received the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing, IBM said.
In addition to her passion for computing, she was an adventurous walker. And she spent much of her career at IBM mentoring other employees, especially women.
In her recollection, IBM quoted McKee, her great-grandfather, as saying, “Professionally, Fran has lived a life in the field of computing … Personally, she was equally focused on inspiring and motivating young people – especially women – to do the same.”
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