The importance of being ERNIE

摘要

ERNIE is the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment that caused huge interest in 1957 when it began selectingprize-winners for the new Premium Bonds, the first government-sponsored gamble in Britain in modern times, Stephanie Shirley was a young statistician working on ERNIE. Today, as Steve Shirley or Dame Stephanie, she is one of the wealthiest women in Britain-not through winning on Premium Bonds herself, but through the pioneering software company she formed which, for the first time, gave female-friendly employment to women programmers (and statisticians) who had children and dependants at home to care for. She is now a major philanthropist and a driving force for research into the social effects of the Internet and into autism. She has given more than £50 million to charities in those fields. Julian Champkin interviews her.