Mary Ann Horton

Mary Ann Horton, formerly Mark R. Horton (born November 21, 1955), is a Usenet and Internet pioneer. Horton contributed to Berkeley UNIX (BSD), including the vi editor and terminfo database, created the first email attachment tool uuencode, and led the growth of Usenet in the 1980s.

Horton is a computer scientist and a transgender educator and activist.

Horton was born in Richland, Washington, and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Finding an interest in computer programming in 1970, Horton moved to San Diego County in 1971, and quickly fell in love with California. She graduated from San Dieguito High School in 1973. Earning a BSCS from the University of Southern California in 1976, Horton went on to obtain an MSCS at the University of Wisconsin, and transfer to the University of California at Berkeley in 1978, earning a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1981.

Horton was introduced to UNIX at Wisconsin, creating an enhanced UNIX text editor called hed. At Berkeley, she contributed to the development of Berkeley UNIX, including the vi text editor, uuencode (the first mechanism for Email attachments), w and load averages, termcap, and curses. Her Ph.D. dissertation was the creation of a new type of syntax directed editor with a textual interface. This technology was later used to create computer-aided software engineering tools.

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