In 1968, at 30 years old, Lynn Conway transitioned. In doing so she lost her wife, her children, and her job at IBM. She continued on, living authentically as her true self and continued her career as an electral engineer. In 1978 she became an associate professor at MIT and taught a course in VLSI (very large scale integration) that became the basis of the Mead-Conway VLSI Design Methodology, changing how we design integrated circuits. In 1985 she became a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan, and later the associate dean of engineering.
32 years after transitioning, Conway came out publicly as a transgender woman. Since than she has been a advocate for transgender people in the tech sector. In 2020 IBM formally apologized for firing Conway for being trans, over 50 years after the fact. Just a bit of #transHistory I learned today.
