While working at IBM on the Advanced Computing Systems project in the 1960s, Lynn Conway developed dynamic instruction scheduling (DIS), a computing architecture technique that enabled computers to perform multiple operations simultaneously, paving the way for the first superscalar computer.

Conway’s reward: she was fired from IBM and all record of her work expunged — all because she’d come out to her employer as being transgender. With her career erased, Conway underwent gender-affirming surgery and began a new career under a new name.

Despite the professional setback, Conway continued building a legacy of profound innovations. In 1973, while working at Xerox PARC with Carver Mead and Bert Sutherland, she co-developed very large-scale integration (VLSI), enabling microchips to hold millions of circuits — kicking off a revolution in computer architecture and design. She returned to MIT, a school she’d previously dropped out of in the 1950s after a physician threatened her with institutionalization, to teach the university’s first VLSI design course.

Conway then worked at DARPA before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan, where she remained for 13 years until her retirement in 1998. She did not come out about her work at IBM until 2000, after which she became an outspoken advocate for transgender rights. Conway was heartened by the changing landscape compared to when she grew up, saying: “Parents who have transgender children are discovering that if they… let that person blossom into who they need to be, they often see just remarkable flourishing of a life force.”

In 2020, fifty-two years after Conway was fired, IBM issued a formal apology.

She passed away at the age of 86 from a heart condition.