Born: 14 April 1922, United States
Died: 1 May 2017
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Mary Elizabeth Moore
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Betty Shannon’s husband Claude was a scientific rock star of the mid-1900s, helping to usher in the computer age. While Claude was well-known to both scientific circles and the general public, few realised Betty was his closest collaborator. They met in 1948 at Bell Labs, where Betty was a computer—the women doing the maths the male engineers needed to make things work—and also published her own research. With an intellect that matched his own, she was often the first person that the notoriously solitary Claude came to with an idea. Betty would look up references, take notes, suggest improvements, and edit his written work, as well as more hands-on, technical contributions. As an article in Scientific American notes, “Though his ideas were very much his own, Betty turned them into publishable work.” In a scientific twist on the wife-as-muse trope, she also encouraged him to try new activities, take speaking engagements and travel to new places—all of which expanded his thinking and ultimately benefited his work.