Dyson - with colleagues in 1986 - stood out because of her gender and brilliance
Dyson, shown with astronauts Maxim Surayev and Jeffrey Williams, trained as a cosmonaut in 2009
Bill Gates towers above influential women, says Dyson, shown with him in 1984
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| "digital visionary" |
Esther
Dyson has been called "the most influential woman in all the computer
world". After fostering some of the biggest names in technology - and
growing wealthy in the process - she is now trying to help people live
better with a new health initiative.
Dyson leaps up to welcome a visitor to a New York office on a
spring morning. It is a typical greeting for her, reflecting an
enthusiasm - and impatience - that goes back decades.
At 16, she enrolled at Harvard.
Even back then, says her friend Bill Kutik, a software
industry analyst, she seemed confident and unafraid. She used to walk
barefoot in the Harvard Crimson newsroom, he says, and also in the
basement "where they were setting newspapers in hot lead".
For these and other reasons she stood out.
"For the longest time I was the youngest," says Dyson. "It's kind of like being the female. It's a useless distinction."
In her case, though, she is not only female - she has played an important role in the field of computers. The
New York Times once called her the industry's "most influential woman".
When Dyson hears that, she makes a face.
"There's an awful lot of women," she says, describing her colleagues in the field. "But none of us is Bill Gates."
As she talks, she is sitting on a couch in a small room at
Meetup.com. The company was founded in 2002, and she was one of its
first investors.
“Start Quote
My parents are both scientists. They like order”
Esther Dyson
At 62, she still takes her shoes
off at work, and she tucks one foot under the other. She is wearing a
black T-shirt that says: "Solve for <x>".
She likes to downplay her role in the industry, but others see her as a "digital visionary" (
Time). She is treated like a rock star in Silicon Valley.
"In all fields that are dominated by men there's often a few
women who are very successful," says Telle Whitney, chief executive of
the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology of Palo Alto,
California.
"She is one of those role models that lets young people believe, 'Oh, I can make this work.'"
In the early years Dyson was often the only woman in the room,
known for her keen intellect. Yet it would be hard for most women to
emulate her, given her unusual background.
She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where her father, Freeman Dyson, was a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study.
"He was Einstein's best friend," says Kutik. Her mother, Verena Huber-Dyson, is a mathematician.
After graduating Harvard, Dyson started out as a reporter at Forbes. Later she edited a must-read newsletter,
Release 1.0, which she ran for more than two decades.
She also bought a company called Rosen Research, which she renamed EDventure Holdings, and invested in technology companies.
And as she told a
New York Times reporter, she made "a lot of money from Google" through one of her investments.
Women in tech - downward slide
- In the 1980s US women earned 37% of bachelor degrees in computer and information science.
- By 2008 the number had dropped, with women earning 18% of the degrees.
Source: National Center for Women and Information Technology
Still, says her friend Kutik, Dyson lives mainly "in the world of ideas".
Today, she spends about one-quarter of her time in New York
and the rest in San Francisco and other cities. She once trained as a
cosmonaut in Star City, Russia, and has flown weightless.
"She's got an 'I don't care' attitude. It's 'I am who I am'.
And she does it in such a nice way," says Vivek Wadhwa, a Stanford Law
School fellow who is writing a book on women in technology. "She can be
arrogant without seeming arrogant."
Dyson's business partner Daphne Kis, CEO of EDventure
Holdings, says, "She's not a show-off but she gets impatient. You know
that moment when Esther talks to you and she's kind of looking at your
ear because she's on to the next thing?"
As founding chairman of Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (Icann), she worked hard to keep the internet free and
vibrant.
"Look at it where the internet is today - the backbone of everything we do," says Wadhwa. "She was one of the luminaries."
Today she invests in start-ups, one of the few women in the
field. Only 11 percent of investors are female, according to a 2011
survey by National Venture Capital Association and Dow Jones.
She says that most requests for start-up money are still from men, though the culture is changing.
"Originally Meetup was 18 guys," she says, looking down the hallway. "Now you walk out there, and there's a lot of women."
Her latest venture is an effort to help women - and men, too -
live better, more healthful lives. Her goal, she says, is "not to cure
cancer but to foster health so people don't get cancer in the first
place".
Her non-profit,
HICCup
(Health Initiative Coordinating Council), will help people in five US
communities become "radically" healthier, she says, as well as collect
data to help people in other places make healthful choices.
Tech women of the world
- US women make up 26% of workers in computer and maths
- Canadian women make up 28% of workers in computer systems
- EU women make up 39% of workers in high-tech manufacturing
Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Canada, Eurostat
She pays attention to her own
health, too. She swims 50 minutes every day - sometimes fast, sometimes
slow - and wears an activity tracker. She holds up her wrist in the late
morning. The band sparkles, which means she has reached her fitness
goal.
"It's only 11:30," says a visitor.
"This goal is too low," Dyson says. "I need to fix it."
Her answer reflects a drive for improvement - for herself and
the world - and helps explain why she decided to create a health
initiative.
"If I was a maid, I'd want a dirty room," she says. "I think in American health I've found a really dirty room.
"My parents are both scientists. They like order. Ask, 'Why?' And when the answer doesn't make any sense then fix it."
As part of the BBC's Women in Tech series we spoke to six other pioneers in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
Eesha Khare: The teenage inventor of a super-capacitor for storing energy
Felicia Day: Hollywood's digital pioneer writes her own happy ending
Ayah Bdeir: The engineer leading an electronics revolution
Cristin Dorgelo: Looking for the 'modern moonshots' at the White House
Leila Janah: Using technology to lift the world's poor out of poverty
