| Profession | Mathematician |
| Born | Irvington, NJ |
| Innovation | Received one of the world’s first software patents which modernized the national telephone network |
| NJ Connection | Worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey for 32 years |
It wasn’t family and well-wishing friends rushing to Erna Hoover’s house in 1971 right after she had come home from the hospital with her second child.
It was a battery of well-heeled, briefcase-toting lawyers who needed her to review important legal paperwork – a patent application Bell Laboratories was filing on Hoover’s behalf.
The Wellesley graduate (with honors) who held a PhD from Yale had used her mathematical skills to create a software program that allowed the national telephone network to evolve from a system of electronic relays which were becoming choked by enormous growth in call volume, to a more modern and efficient system able to manage any amount of calls.
The patent was issued in November 1971 and became one of the first software patents event issued.
As a result of this success, Erna Hoover became the first woman supervisor of a technical department at Bell Labs.
“When I was hired,” she once said, “the glass ceiling was somewhere between the basement and the sub-basement.”
She worked at the Labs for 32 years during which time she focused on anti-ballistic missile systems and artificial intelligence. She retired in 1987.
In 2008, Erna Hoover was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.
