Anita Borg, 54; Programmer Helped Pave Way for Women in Technology

Anita Borg, a computer scientist who broke new ground for women in technology, died Sunday of brain cancer at her mother’s Sonoma home. She was 54.

Borg, who taught herself how to program computers while working at an insurance company, went on to earn a doctorate in computer science at New York University in 1981.

Working as a researcher at Digital Equipment Corp., Borg noticed the dearth of women in her field when she attended a computing conference in 1987. That revelation led her to start an e-mail support group for women in technology, dubbed Systers. The group currently has 2,500 members in 40 countries.

Borg, an amateur pilot who also mountain-biked and kayaked, thought her profession needed more women, who she felt would be more likely to develop technology to meet social rather than commercial interests.

“I believe women think differently,” Borg said in an interview with the Boston Globe a year ago, two years after she was diagnosed as having cancer.

Borg also believed women were discouraged from computer science by the profession’s negative stereotype of geeks who do nothing but sit in front of computers for hours on end.

To dispel those images, Borg launched the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in 1994, a gathering now held every other year.

“She felt that the right way to promote the success of women in technology fields was to celebrate their successes, not complain about the barriers they faced,” said Maria Klawe, dean of Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science in Princeton, N.J., and a longtime friend of Borg.

Three years later, Borg embarked on what would be her last major project -- establishing the Institute for Women and Technology in Palo Alto.

The Chicago-born Borg is survived by her husband, Winfried Wilcke of Los Altos Hills, a physicist and computer architect; a sister, Lee Naffz; and mother Beverly Naffz of Sonoma.