Alice Burks

Who is Alice Burks?

Alice Rowe Burks is an American author of children's books and books about the history of electronic computers.

Born Alice Rowe, she began her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College on a competitive mathematics scholarship and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where she completed her B.A. in mathematics in 1944. During this period, she was employed as a human computer at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. She retired from full-time work after marrying Moore School lecturer Dr. Arthur Burks, a mathematician who served as one of the principal engineers in the construction of the ENIAC, the world's first general-purpose electronic digital computer, built at the Moore School between 1943 and 1946. Unlike some of the Moore School women computers, Alice never worked directly with the ENIAC.

At the conclusion of Arthur's work with the Moore School and at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1946, Alice moved with Arthur to Ann Arbor, Michigan where he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan and helped to found the computer science department.