.

“New York, NY, February 21, 2007
– ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named Frances E.
Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions
that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in
solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance
computing. This award marks the first time that a woman has received
this honor. The Turing Award, first presented in 1966, and named for
British mathematician Alan M. Turing, is widely considered the “Nobel
Prize in Computing.” It carries a $100,000 prize, with financial
support provided by Intel Corporation.”

(Basically, Allen worked on programs that take computer programs and translate them from one computer language to another, and she also worked on computer programs that used multiple processors.)

Read the full article here
http://campus.acm.org/public/pressroom/press_releases/2_2007/turing2006.cfm