Jean Jennings Bartik

The onus of having been a pioneer requires that you spend your retirement recounting your career.

Jean Jennings Bartik, 83, a computer programming pioneer, knows this all too well.

“I have a lot of people who want to talk to me,” Ms. Bartik said from her home in New Jersey. “The problem with all of it is, they don’t understand it.”

Ms. Bartik, who was raised on a farm near Stanberry, Mo., and earned a degree in mathematics from what is now Northwest Missouri State University, was called to the East Coast in 1945 to work on the ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator). It was essentially a computer used to write artillery firing tables, and Ms. Bartik was a programmer.

She went on to work on early electronic computer systems, the BINAC and UNIVAC I, which are now on display at computer museums.

Ms. Bartik was recently inducted into the Hall of Fellows at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. There she joins only the most celebrated computer movers and shakers, including this year’s fellow inductees, software engineer Linus Torvald, who developed the Linux kernel, and Bob Metcalfe, co-inventor of the ethernet. She’s the fourth woman inducted into the Hall of Fellows, which has fewer than 50 members.

But Ms. Bartik has received other distinctions over the years; a computer museum at Northwest is named in her honor. She’s also received an honorary doctorate at Northwest. In 1997, she was inducted in the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame.

“I almost fell off my chair,” Ms. Bartik said when she was told about being chosen for the Hall of Fellows.

But more than 60 years after embarking on her career, Ms. Bartik said she’s surprised that more women haven’t followed or been allowed to follow her lead.

“Women are still having a hard time making it,” she said. “There is still the old boys’ club ... women still have to fight.”

Jimmy Myers can be reached

at jimmym@npgco.com.