Susan G. Bond

Susan Bond
Susan Bond
Born	1942 (age 77–78); Essex
Nationality	British
Occupation	Scientific researcher, research manager
Years active	1965–1993
Known for	Computing research
Notable work	ALGOL 68-R

Susan Bond (born 1942), was a scientific officer and computer programmer for the Mathematics Division of the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE) in the United Kingdom. She worked extensively on the ALGOL 68 programming language and the Royal Radar Establishment Automatic Computer (RREAC), an early solid-state, ICL 1907F computer.[1][2]

Early life

Bond was born in 1942 and grew up in Dagenham, Essex, in the UK. Both her parents were teachers, and she was an only child.[1] She studied at Bristol University from 1962 to 1965, where she studied mathematics and science and received first-class honours.

Career and research

After graduating from Bristol, Bond was interested in working in applied mathematics, although she didn't have computer training before that point. She applied to and joined the Mathematics Division of the RRE in 1965;[3] she was hired by British mathematician and engineer Philip Woodward. Her work mostly consisted of writing operating systems and compilers, not "numerical" computing.[1] At the beginning of her career, Bond was the only female scientific officer with a graduate education at RRE.[4] Bond later learned that her supervisor Woodward had been, as historian Janet Abbate describes, "'actively recruiting women' as an affordable source of high-quality researchers".[5]

One of her first projects was reimplementing Syntax Improving Device (SID), a compiler-compiler tool developed by Michael Foster (another RRE employee) to generate compilers for high-level programming languages.[1] Afterwards, she worked with Ian Currie on Coral 64, a high-level language for embedded computers.

Implementing ALGOL 68

The RRE had originally used ALGOL 60 for the RREAC from its initial development in 1963. After the International Federation for Information Processing published the specifications for the more powerful ALGOL 68 in 1968, RRE attempted to adapt it for use on the RREAC. Susan Bond worked with John Morison and Ian Currie on ALGOL 68-R, the first compiler implementation of ALGOL 68, and they announced its creation at the 20–24 July 1970 conference IFIP Working Conference on ALGOL 68 Implementation in Munich.[6][2] Their ALGOL 68-R was an adaptation of the ALGOL 60 compiler they had built for RREAC. The team that worked on ALGOL 68-R intended for the language to become the RRE's primary programming language, which could be used for scientific programming as well as business administration tasks like payroll and taking inventory.[7][2]

After the publication of the ALGOL 68-R specifications, Bond published a narrative guide to ALGOL 68, titled "ALGOL 68-R User’s Guide", with Philip Woodward through HM Stationery Office. The guide's initial 17,000 copy run sold out.[6] Bond effectively provided ongoing support for the compiler; readers would contact her whenever they had trouble implementing it. Bond and Woodward continued to update and publish new versions of the their guide for the RRE's later implementations of ALGOL, such as ALGOL 68RS. One reviewer, Richard Shreeve, contested that while their 1983 title Guide to ALGOL 68 for Users of RS Systems was an "excellent reference text", it gives "insufficient help to the beginner or newcomer to ALGOL 68".[8]

Superintendent of Computing and Software Research

Bond was promoted to Superintendent of Computing and Software Research of the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in 1980 (the RRE merged with several other research institutions and was renamed in 1976).[1][9] As part of her role, Bond collaborated with the Open Software Foundation on the Architecture Neutral Distribution Format and on computing policy for the UK Ministry of Defense.

Bond retired from work in 1993.

Personal life

Bond met her husband, Chris Sennett, while working at the RRE.[1]

gollark: So that you can flatten a binary tree by unhooking it and enabling gravity.

gollark: Idea: 2D memory with objects with rigid body mechanics.

gollark: I actually did it manually.

gollark: PRs welcome!

gollark: I don't know, I don't have much rep.

References

"Susan Bond: An Interview Conducted by Janet Abbate for the IEEE History Center". ethw.org. IEEE History Center. Retrieved 25 December 2019.
Currie, I. F.; Bond, Susan G.; Morison, J. D. (1971). Peck, J.E.L. (ed.). ALGOL 68 implementation; proceedings of the IFIP Working Conference on ALGOL 68 Implementation, Munich, July 20-24, 1970 (PDF). Amsterdam, London: North-Holland Pub. Co. pp. 21–34. ISBN 0720420458. Retrieved 3 January 2020.
Abbate, Janet (2012). Recoding gender: women's changing participation in computing. MIT Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-0262018067.
"I don’t recall any other women Scientific Officers; there certainly weren’t any working closely with me, until about three or four years later.", "Susan Bond: An Interview Conducted by Janet Abbate for the IEEE History Center".
Abbate, Janet. "The Geeks & the Girls: Women in Computer Science Rise Again". Subway Reads. Retrieved 25 December 2019.
Whitaker, G. D. (29 April 2018). "Algol 68". Malvern Radar and Technology History Society. Retrieved 25 December 2019.
Dasgupta, Subrata (2018). The second age of computer science : from ALGOL genes to neural nets. Oxford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0190843861.
Shreeve, Richard I.; Woodward, Philip M.; Bond, Susan G. (March 1985). "Guide to ALGOL 68 for Users of RS Systems". The Mathematical Gazette. 69 (447): 66. doi:10.2307/3616477. JSTOR 3616477.
Bud, Robert; Gummett, Philip (January 1999). Cold war, hot science : applied research in Britain's defence laboratories, 1945-1990. Harwood Academic Publishers in association with the Science Museum. ISBN 90-5702-481-0.