Jean E. Sammet was born on March 23, 1928 in New York City.
She received her BA in Mathematics from Mount Holyoke College in 1948 and her MA in Mathematics from University of Illinois in 1949.
She joined IBM in 1961 to organize and manage the Boston Programming Center in the IBM Data Systems Division to do advanced development work in programming. She initiated the concept and directed the development of the first FORMAC (FORmula MAnipulation Compiler). FORMAC was the first widely used general language. It was also the first system for manipulating nonnumeric algebraic expressions.
In 1965, she became programming language technology manager in the IBM Systems Development Division. Afterward, she wrote a book on programming languages. In 1965, she also received the IBM Outstanding Contribution Award. Her book, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, was published by Prentice-Hall in 1969.
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