Mary Elizabeth Moore Shannon

Mary Elizabeth “Betty” Moore Shannon was born in 1922 in New York City. She studied mathematics at the New Jersey College for Women (now Rutgers’ Douglass College), where she graduated on a full scholarship. After completing her studies, she joined Bell Laboratories in Manhattan as a “computer,” part of a team of mathematically trained women responsible for performing manual calculations before the introduction of electronic computing machines. She later became a Technical Assistant in the mathematics department, working on research related to microwave and radar systems. In 1949 she married fellow Bell Labs researcher Claude E. Shannon, beginning a lifelong partnership grounded in shared interests in mathematics, music, and experimentation.

At Bell Laboratories, she worked in applied mathematics and acoustics, contributing to research projects led by John R. Pierce and others within the mathematics department. She co-authored the 1949 Bell Labs Technical Memorandum Composing Music by a Stochastic Process, an early study in algorithmic composition that applied probability to musical structure and is regarded as one of the first documented examples of computer-related composition. Being formally credited as a co-author was an uncommon recognition for a woman researcher at Bell Labs during this period and underscored the significance of her contributions. She also collaborated with Claude Shannon on several experimental projects, including the maze-solving mouse Theseus in 1950 and the roulette-predicting device developed during the same period, often described as the first wearable computer.

After leaving Bell Laboratories in 1951, she established herself as a leading figure within the American weaving community. She earned the Master Weaver rating from the Weavers’ Guild of Boston in 1971 and served as the Guild’s Dean from 1976 to 1978. Her work was recognized nationally with the Guild’s Distinguished Achievement Award and an honorary life membership from the Handweavers Guild of America in 1996. Shannon passed away in 2017.