Kathleen Booth

Kathleen Booth (1922 to 2022), born Kathleen Britten at Stourbridge in Worcestershire, was an English mathematician and a pioneer of early computing. She took a degree in special mathematics at Royal Holloway College, London, in 1944, worked as a junior scientific officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, and in 1946 joined the research group at Birkbeck College led by J. D. Bernal and Andrew Booth. In 1947 she visited the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where she and Andrew Booth discussed computer design with John von Neumann and co-wrote reports on the design and coding of an electronic digital computer. She received a PhD in applied mathematics from the University of London in 1950 for a thesis on wind tunnel blockage and married Andrew Booth the same year. Together they built and programmed the SEC and the APEC computers, and MacTutor credits her with developing assembly language. She later worked in Canada and died at Sooke on Vancouver Island.