Jeanne Clare Adams

June 15, 1921, Utica, N. Y; Chairman of the ANSI Fortran Standards Committee that developed the controversial Fortran 9X proposal, which introduced array and vector processing to the language.

Education: BS, economics, University of Michigan, 1943; MS, telecommunications and electrical engineering, University of Colorado, 1979.

Professional Experience: systems analyst, Army Air Corps, 1943-1946; research statistician, Research Program, Harvard University, 1947-1949; National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo., 1960-1981, 1984-present; CYBER 05 project coordinator, Institute for Computational Studies, Colorado State University, 1982-1 984.

Jeanne Adams, who holds a master's degree in electrical engineering and telecommunications from the University of Colorado, is a long-time computer-user support manager for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. For a brief period she coordinated the CYBER 205 project for Colorado State University's Institute for Computational Studies. Adams went to CSUI in February 1982 from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where she had been deputy head of the Computing Division, assistant for planning, and manager of university liaison. She was a research statistician for a project on juvenile delinquency at Harvard University and served as systems service analyst for the Army Air Force. She is chair of the International Standards Organization Committee on Programming Languages (TC97/SC5) and the ANSI Fortran Standards Committee (X3J3). Adams has written reference manuals for a variety of computer equipment, including the CYBER 205.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Significant Publications

Adams, Jeanne C., Walter S. Brainerd, and Charles H. Coldberg, Programmer's Guide to Fortran 90, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1990.

Adams, Jeanne C., Walter S. Brainerd, J. Martin, B. Smith, and J. Wagener, Fortran 90 Handbook, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1992.

UPDATES

From a memorial article on a National Center for Atmospheric Research website:

NCAR retiree Jeanne Adams passed away on April 21 [2007] at age 85. Jeanne worked at NCAR beginning in the 1960s until her retirement in 1997.

Jeanne was a pioneer in the computer field, getting her start with early machines during World War II. At NCAR, she worked in what is now called CISL, developing and teaching short courses on scientific programming. Jeanne co-authored Programmer's Guide to Fortran 90 and chaired the American National Standards Institute committee that developed the programming language. She was also a past chair of the International Programming Languages Committee of the International Standards Organization.

Jeanne was especially known around NCAR's computing facilities for the challenging programming tasks she would assign to exercise and develop the abilities of staff new to supercomputing. "I admired and respected Jeanne for her mentoring skills, Fortran standards expertise, and management acumen," says Unidata's Russ Rew, who worked with Jeanne for 15 years.

Jeanne played a major role in two of NCAR's early educational programs: the Fellowship Program in Scientific Computing, launched in 1966, and the Computing Facility Internship Program for Minority Students, launched in 1974. Participants included a number of current NCAR scientists as well as leaders in research and education at other NCAR institutions.

"Jeanne's student program was a terrific benefit to NCAR because the students became friends of NCAR, and later many of them developed into administrators, professors, and researchers in the atmospheric and related sciences," says retiree Paul Swarztrauber, who worked with Jeanne for 30 years.

Jeanne will also be remembered for the field trips she organized for summer program participants, including hikes up Mt. Audubon, picnics at Bear Lake, and barbecues in her backyard at the end of the summer. Her husband Merle, a CU professor, accompanied her in most of these activities.

Jeanne is survived by her three children, Clare, Douglas, and Samuel, and five grandchildren. A memorial was held on April 27 in Lafayette.