Irene McDonald

Irene Charolette 'Mac' McDonald (December 1, 1886 - February 29, 1972) was an American programmer, computer scientist, and librarian. She was active in the development of many early computers, and is credited with the ideas of the McDonald Algorithm and the McDonald System in computer science. She wrote the majority of the TENANT Programming Language.

Early Life and Education
Irene McDonald was born to Ida (nee London) and Jack McDonald in Portland, Maine. The family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1894, and McDonald attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1905 to 1910. An avid reader, she secured a job in the University library. After graduating, she lamented that she had only gotten "halfway through".

Tritian
In 1911, three days after her 25th birthday she was hired by Tritian, and found work in their Computer Lab developing computing and calculation systems alongside James Robertson and Edmond Dowd, among others. She programmed many of the early prototypes the Lab produced, and was involved in the development of what would become the Tritian Calculator.

McDonald was involved in the programming of four more Tritian computing projects through 1945, including the successor to the Calculator, the TEC II.

Later Career
McDonald left Tritian in early 1946, and remained active in the emerging field of computer science, working at various times for Coe, the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering with ENIAC, and a number of United States government projects. She contributed to the development of stored-program computing and electromagnetic memory, and her work was published in many journals. Between 1957 and 1960 she designed and configured the TENANT imperative programming language, which would find a home in many of the supercomputer systems developed during the end of the 20th century.

She had married Sgt. Louis Barber, a decorated veteran of WWII in 1947. They had twin daughters in 1953.

During the last decade of her life she returned to work as a librarian. She died of heart failure in her home in 1972, survived by her husband, daughters, and one grandson.