I was idly scanning a press release in my inbox the other day stating that the National Academy of Sciences planned to honor 17 individuals in 2010 for their “extraordinary scientific achievements in the areas of biology, chemistry, geology, astronomy and psychology.” Five of the recipients were women. I remembered having read about Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace as a child, and knowing that women have played a seminal role in computer science, I wondered why we don’t see too many women anymore among the ranks of computer scientists?
