Previously little girls wanted to become astronauts, actresses, presidents, chefs and now they are dreaming of becoming programmers. Life without IT technologies is impossible now and it is quite clear why women who stood at the very beginning of these sphere are inspiring to many: almost 99% of programmers are men right now, and there aren’t many representatives of the “weaker” sex. But there are some: we’ve listed 5 great women who are kind of responsible for us now being able to buy Instagram followers and stay on social media for hours. And also they are responsible for great inventions that lay in the base of this sphere! The list is below, read and enjoy!

1. Ada Lovelace

There’s no way that we would be able to talk about programming apart from her — basically, computers and programs would not exist if it were not for this lady. Her only passion was mathematics and she spent a lot of her time on work, in the course of redoing and completing the gaps in Babbage's scientific theories, who was her teacher for a long time. Her notes are an amazing example of the first programming system.

2. Hedy Lamarr

But she is an actress, you might say. Yes, she is — Hollywood actress from the 40s and 50s australian-born Hedy Lamarr was actively engaged in research on practically everything in the world. In the 40s, Lamarr and her friend patented an invention that allows remote control of torpedoes over long distances. And yet it was not totally recognized by scientific society back then, 50 years later this invention has evolved into what is today called smartphone and Wi-Fi connectivity.

3. Mary Lee Woods

At school her favorite subject and passion was… math, of course, and later Mary entered the University of Birmingham to devote herself entirely to science. Later that time she was hired to work for a company that created commercial computers. She basically stood at the origins of the creation of the first commercial PCs. Moreover, this incredible woman gave birth to a man, Tim Berners Lee, who later pioneered the Internet. This is what we call strong genes!

4. Helen Hancock

She not only had a big role in creating the first commercial PCs, but she also inspired others to do so. She was common with Steve Jobs and it was kind of because of her that he took firm steps towards creating the first Mac and didn’t let go of his plans and aspirations. Also this woman took a bold step and suggested making the OS user-centric — it was her idea! And here we’d like to remind that this is what changed Apple's history and propelled the company to unprecedented heights of success.

5. Marissa Mayer

This talented woman easily entered Stanford and got a degree in symbolic systems, and then in artificial intelligence, which at that time was in its embryonic state. It’s not surprising that later that time she started working in Google, back then it was just a promising start-up. For 13 years she worked there in the field of programming, design, artificial intelligence systems and search. She had a hand in creating Google maps, images, news. After that, she left the company in order to become the CEO of Yahoo!