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wirelessduck [soylentnews.org] writes:

Visionary tech pioneer and philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley has died at the age of 91 [bbc.com].

The boundary-breaking entrepreneur arrived in London at the age of five, just weeks before the outbreak of World War Two, and went on to become a computer industry and women's rights pioneer in the 1950s and 1960s.

She founded the software company Freelance Programmers in 1962, which shook up the tech industry by almost exclusively hiring women, and in later life donated almost £70m to help those with autism and to IT projects.

She was very smart and truly formidable, even adopting the name "Steve" [bbc.co.uk] to help her in a male-dominated tech world.

She died on 9 August, her family said in an Instagram post on Monday.

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