Source: Bartik Biography- University of St Andrews (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Bartik.html)
Early Life
Jean Bartik was born in Gentry County, Missouri, in 27 December 1924, under the name Betty Jean Jennings. Her father, William Smith Jennings, was from Alanthus Grove and was a schoolteacher and a farmer. Her mother’s name was Lulu May Spainhower and she was from Alanthus. Bartik had five elder siblings, three brother and two sisters. She graduated in 1945 from Northwest Missouri State Teachers College majoring in mathematics.
Career
In 1945, she was hired by the University of Pennsylvania as a maths major to calculate ballistics trajectories for the Army Ordinance. She was required to carry out this work by hand as a human computer. She applied and got selected for a project when the Electronic-numeric Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was developed and became one of its first programmers. ENIAC was programmed by setting dials and changing cable connections. As there was no manual, she and her five other original programmers gained expertise in programming the ENIAC only by reviewing its schematic diagrams and interacting with engineers.
She and a group of programmers worked at a later stage for the conversion of the ENIAC to a stored program computer. Thus she came up with the BINAC and UNIVAC computers by working along with ENIAC designers in the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. She resigned in 1951, the same year UNIVAC was introduced.
Personal Life
While working for Army ordinance in the University of Pennsylvania, she met an engineer working on a Pentagon Project named William Bartik. They got married in 1946 and later divorced in 1968.
Later Life
In 1967, Bartik returned to the regular job portfolio and became an Editor for Auerbach Publishers. Later she worked for a firm named data Decisions in 1981 as a Senior Editor. However, Data Decisions shut down in 1985 as it got acquired by McGraw-Hill. As a result, she lost her job and started her career as a real estate agent at the age of 61. She died on March 23, 2011 from congestive heart failure.
Significant Awards
She, along with other original programmers of the ENIAC, was introduced into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame. She also received a fellowship at the Computer History Museum for her contribution in converting the ENIAC into a stored program computer. She also received awards like IEEE Computer Pioneer Award for her pioneering work regarding the ENIAC and Korenman Award from the Multinational Center for Development of Women in Technology (MDWIT).