Rest in Joyous Peace, Edie
Edith “Edie” Windsor is gloriously raising hell in heaven today.
Edie was a gifted and brilliant mathematician who worked on the ground floor of IBM’s development of the Univac. As a child, she lived through the depression and saw her family lose their home and their business. Although physically tiny, Edie was larger than life. Edie was also gay.
She is the Windsor in United States v. Windsor, where she overturned Section 3 of DOMA on a 5-4 decision, allowing surviving spouses in same-sex marriages the same tax benefits as allowed in any other marriage in America.
This is Edie in June of this year, at 88 years old, at the DC Pride Parade.
She is a genuine American hero and lived a life of courage, fortitude, and joy.
I hope there is another Edie Windsor born today because we need another one.
Pride.
I’ve been trying to imagine a person who could have better represented the marriage-equality movement than Edie did. You know, somebody smarter, more articulate, more appealing.
I have failed.
1After watching “Hidden Figures” and now this person I am wondering what generated such a generation of women genius mathematician in that era? Where are their counterparts of today?
Minor note: Univac was not an IBM project or product. It was a company called Eckert Mauchly.
2I miss this man.
http://time.com/4939237/read-barack-obama-edie-windsor-tribute/
3Amen!
4Rest in peace you wonderful Lady! JJ is right–we need more souls like you in this world
5A deeply felt “amen” to all the sentiments expressed above.
6Edie was an intelligent, articulate lady who stood fast for her principles. She is sorely missed.
7She is more royal than any of the “other” Windsors! Here’s to you, Edie!
8When a person reaches true maturity having lived a full life and changes our world for the better, don’t mourn. Celebrate! We were lucky to have her. Let us honor her memory by supporting people walking the trail she blazed.
9Have a vision of Edie and Molly Ivins sitting at a table and having a long conversation. Thanks to both ladies for all they achieved
10If there’s an afterlife, I hope Edie’s happily reunited with her wife. Good on ya, strong woman.
11@Alan: Here are a few current female mathematicians: http://www.ams.org/women-mathematicians. And I’m sure they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
As a woman in math-adjacent computer science, I can say that sexism is alive and well and actually worse now because it can’t be overt anymore. Women get subtle cues in school that math isn’t for them, and the ones who persist anyway often leave the field later, when they get tired of the bs. I’m an Old now, so I have the tech double-whammy — sexism *and* ageism. I hope it will be better for my daughters.
Planet Money did a great episode on this: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding
The female geniuses are still out there; they’re just getting discouraged before their brilliance can be recognized.
12Let’s have a statue for Edie in place of every damned Confederate general. She sure did a lot more for her fellow Americans than those traitorous bastards did.
13IBM had nothing to do with Univac. Their management was against computers as a threat to their existing machine business. They entered the computer field late. Sperry bought the design and marketed it. It took the Chairman Dying and His Son Watson Jr. taking over to get them into computers. They are the Debil too.
14Edith Windsor is one of my heroes. I want to be like her when I grow up.
Women dominated the “human computer” field until money in it grew. Then males drove them out and made STEM a boy’s thing. That’s what we’re struggling to overcome now.
(I can’t tell you how much I loathe patriarchy.)
15If it weren’t for Edie I would not be married today, soon to celebrate 4 years of marriage (after a 20-year “engagement.”)
Thanks, Edie. I hope rainbows lit your way to the next great adventure and that you’re having a blast with with your new wings.
16Yup.
A true American hero!
17I like Bill de Blasio’s tweet:
“The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. But sometimes it needs a good kick in the ass from people like Edie Windsor.”
18There are plenty of female mathematical and scientific geniuses and they’re getting the same kind of recognition and publicity they did in Edie’s day, which is very little.
19I feel blessed to have lived at the same time as Blessed Edie. Saw her at Pride and though, what an amazing warrior!
Rest in Power., Rest in Pride Edie.
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