Dr. Kathleen Booth (nee Britten)

Born in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England, she obtained a B.Sc. in Mathematics, from the University of London in 1944 and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1950. From 1944 to 1946, she was Junior Scientific Officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough and from 1946 to 1952, a Research Scientist at British Rubber Producer?s Research Association. From 1952 to 1962 she was Research Fellow and Lecturer at Birbeck College, University of London and became a Research Fellow, Lecturer and Associate Professor at the University of Sasketchewan, Canada from 1962 to 1972. She then became Professor of Mathematics at Lakehead University Canada from 1972 ? 1978. From 1965 to 1973, she was also Director of the N.R.C. Project on machine translation; and since 1978, C.E.O., Autonetics Research Associates. Sometimes credited with writing the first assembly language and the design of the assembler and autocode (ARC and APE(X)C) for the Birkbeck College computers, University of London, the publications from 1947 which locate her (then Britten) in the timeline of computer programming languages were co-authored with Andrew D. Booth who in turn was primarily responsible for founding the Computer Science Department at Birkbeck. While he built the machines, she wrote the programming language. They were married in 1950 and had two children. They were the smallest of the early British computer groups and were based at Birkbeck College in the University of London. That this group produced three machines, ARC,SEC, and APEXC, during the period 1947 to 1953 was a remarkable achievement, considering the size of the group (mainly just the two of them) and the limited funds at its disposal. Although APEXC eventually led to the successful HEC series manufactured by the British Tabulating Machine Company, the small scale of the Birkbeck operation did not place it in the front rank of British computer activity.