Vera Watson (1932 – October 17, 1978) was an American computer programmer, mountaineer and rock climber who made the first woman's solo climb of Acongagua, [1] the highest mountain in the Americas. She also made several first ascents in the Kenai Mountains in Alaska. [1] She was a member of the successful first all-women team to climb Annapurna, but was killed along with her partner Alison Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz while preparing to attempt the unclimbed central summit of the mountain. [2]
Watson worked at IBM Research in San Jose, California, from 1973 onwards. [1] She was initially active in machine translation, before moving into database management system design. She worked on System R, which was the first implementation of SQL, a standardised database query language which has since become a dominant standard. [3] [4] She took a leave without pay to make the solo attempt on Aconcagua, and then again for the expedition to Annapurna. [3] She was married to John McCarthy, a pioneer in the discipline of artificial intelligence and creator of the Lisp programming language.
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Vera Watson (1932 – October 17, 1978) was an American computer programmer, mountaineer and rock climber who made the first woman's solo climb of Acongagua, [1] the highest mountain in the Americas. She also made several first ascents in the Kenai Mountains in Alaska. [1] She was a member of the successful first all-women team to climb Annapurna, but was killed along with her partner Alison Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz while preparing to attempt the unclimbed central summit of the mountain. [2]
Watson worked at IBM Research in San Jose, California, from 1973 onwards. [1] She was initially active in machine translation, before moving into database management system design. She worked on System R, which was the first implementation of SQL, a standardised database query language which has since become a dominant standard. [3] [4] She took a leave without pay to make the solo attempt on Aconcagua, and then again for the expedition to Annapurna. [3] She was married to John McCarthy, a pioneer in the discipline of artificial intelligence and creator of the Lisp programming language.
{{
cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)