Dame Stephanie Shirley was born in Germany in 1933. She arrived in Britain as an unaccompanied child refugee escaping Nazi Germany. The girls’ high school she attended did not teach mathematics, but after taking an assessment she was granted permission to study the subject at the local boys’ school.

At 18 she began work at the Post Office’s Dollis Hill research station, where she became increasingly interested in computers. She worked on major technological projects including the first transatlantic telephone cable, the first electronic telephone exchange, and the Premium Bond random‑number machine, ERNIE, where she was the only woman working under Tommy Flowers.

In 1962, after experiencing stalled career progression at a company that later became ICL, Dame Stephanie founded her own software business, Freelance Programmers, which employed an almost entirely female workforce until the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act made such hiring practices illegal. To help promote her company in a male‑dominated industry, she signed her name “Steve” rather than Stephanie. Her teams worked on many innovative projects, including programming for the black‑box flight recorders used in Concorde jets. 

She retired from business in 1993 to focus on philanthropic work and later became the founder and president of Autistica, supporting autism research and advocacy. 

Dame Stephanie Shirley died on 9 August 2025, aged 91, leaving behind a remarkable legacy as a computing pioneer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.