We’re celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8 by highlighting the groundbreaking contributions and unique stories of A&S women. All week, we’ll shine a spotlight on the vibrant women of our community.
A Faculty of Arts & Science alumna is believed to be the first woman in the world to earn a doctorate in computer science and Canada’s first female computer scientist.
Beatrice Worsley (1921–1972) also worked on some of the earliest computers ever and even named the first computer at U of T.
Worsley, known to her friends and colleagues as Trixie, was a member of Trinity College and graduated from U of T with a bachelor of mathematics in 1944 before blazing a trail for women in computer science.
Among Worsley’s friends was Professor Charlotte Froese Fischer, an internationally recognized mathematician and computer scientist who believes her late friend never received the proper recognition for her accomplishments.
To spread the word about her achievements, Fischer established the Beatrice “Trixie” Worsley Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science in 2013 and has contributed an additional $100,000 to the award this year.
“I felt this was important because she really did a number of incredible things,” says Fischer, a professor emerita of Vanderbilt University. “And U of T has done very well with the scholarship I created initially, so I figured I should give a little more.”
The scholarship is awarded to students — with preference given to international students — enrolled in the PhD program in U of T’s Department of Computer Science who have taken an active role in helping promote women in this field.
Looking back, Fischer admires Worsley’s perseverance in trying to establish herself during a difficult time when few doors were opening for women in the early stages of computers.
“When she started her career, there was a tradition for women in government labs and industry, that regardless of whether they had a PhD or not, their highest rank would be lab technician,” says Fischer.
After completing her degree at U of T, Worsley enlisted in the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service during the Second World War. She worked as a harbour defense researcher at the Naval Research Establishment (NRE) in Halifax.
She worked on exciting projects such as data analysis related to degaussing ships, a process that reduces the ships’ magnetic footprint to help them elude German magnetic mines.
After the war, Worsley left the NRE to complete her master’s in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, she was exposed to very early computer technology and was hooked.
With relatively few jobs in computing in Canada, she joined U of T’s newly established Computation Centre as a project assistant at a salary of $200 per month — established in 1948, the U of T Computation Centre was a precursor to the Department of Computer Science.
A research trip enticed Worsley to travel to the University of Cambridge where she learned about an early computer called the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator and was involved in its first test run of calculations.
Inspired by this experience, she stayed in England to complete a PhD in mathematical physics at Newnham College at Cambridge.
She returned to Canada in 1951 and rejoined U of T’s Computation Centre, this time as a staff mathematician. The following year, U of T acquired its very first computer from the UK called the Ferranti Mark I.
Worsley operated the console and nicknamed it “Ferut” which stood for “Ferranti computer at the University of Toronto.” She later became a co-creator of a coding language for Ferut.
In 1956, Fischer met Worsley at the Computation Centre. The two didn’t work together directly but quickly became friends.
“I found her very friendly. She wasn’t a very outgoing person, but she had a wry sense of humour,” says Fischer.
“You spend time with a person and think you know them, but there are so many things about them you don't know. I learned a lot about what Trixie had done many years later. As a scientist, if I meet another scientist, I don't just talk to them about science. I mean, most people don't want to talk about science,” she jokes.
A distinguished teaching career followed at U of T and Queen’s University. Worsley even helped develop the curriculum for undergraduate and graduate courses at Queen’s newly formed Department of Computing and Information Science.
Tragically, she died of a heart attack while on a research sabbatical at the University of Waterloo at the age of 50. Fischer happened to be on Waterloo’s faculty at the time.
In 2014, Worsley received a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Association of Computer Science in recognition of her exceptional contribution to computer research.
Fischer wanted to do something a little more personal to honour her friend.
“To have a scholarship in her name that allows women from abroad to come and study at U of T — that’s something I want to support.”