Two of the earliest important contributors to computer science are distinguished women:
Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper
Ada Lovelace made no significant contributions for science, mathematics, or computer science. The work for which Ada is most famous consists of writing up Babbage's algorithm descriptions. She did not create them herself, but from Babbage's notes. Babbage hired her to generate publicity for his difference engine because she was famous, and she was famous because she was a *female* scientist and mathematician, as a dancing bear is famous not for dancing well, but for dancing at all. Grace Hopper cause Cobol to be created, a language infamous for being bad, but popular with authority figures. She issued a bunch of extremely bad specifications, reflecting what authority figures who do not understand computing are likely to mistakenly think that they want, and then programmers who were actually competent then gave effect to her incompetent and bad idea. There are no great female scientists. If there were you would not have been reduced to giving Marie Curie not one but two Nobel prizes for work that no male would have received a Nobel prize for. (For the similar but far more important discovery of Radon made at about the same time got no Nobel prize), work that she did as the least important member of a team of three scientists, all of them greater than her, and yet the two males did not get the Nobel prize. There is one great female mathematician, Noether, of whom it was said "I can testify that she is a great mathematician, but that she is female I am far from sure." All other supposedly great female mathematicians are fakes in the style of Marie Curie, or routine mediocrities in the style of Ada and Hopper.