Diff — Kateryna Yushchenko

{{infobox

| title = Kateryna Yushchenko

| born = 8 December 1919, Chyhyryn, Ukraine (née Rvacheva)

| died = 15 August 2001

| fields = Computer science · theoretical programming

| known_for = Address programming language (1955) — first high-level language with pointers

| firsts = First woman in the USSR to earn a Doctor of Physical & Mathematical Sciences in programming

| honors = Corresponding member, USSR Academy of Sciences (1976) · 2× USSR State Prize · Order of Princess Olga · Glushkov Prize

}}

**Kateryna Lohvynivna Yushchenko** (Ukrainian: Катерина Логвинівна Ющенко, née **Rvacheva**; 8 December 1919 – 15 August 2001) was a Ukrainian computer scientist who created the **[[Address programming language]]** in 1955 — one of the world's first high-level programming languages and the first to implement indirect addressing of higher ranks: what every programmer today calls *pointers*. Over forty years she founded and led the Soviet school of theoretical programming, supervised 47 doctoral students, and became the first woman in the USSR to earn a Doctorate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences in programming.[[cite: en.wikipedia; NASU memorial bulletin, 2001]]

## Life

Born in Chyhyryn, central Ukraine, she began at Kyiv University in 1937. The war interrupted everything — she finished her degree in exile at **Central Asian State University in Tashkent** in 1942. Her husband, the writer Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, was arrested as an "enemy of the people"; Ukrainian accounts record that she was expelled from the Komsomol for refusing to denounce him, and later reinstated.[[cite: uacomputing history; kyivske vedomosti profile]]

After the war she returned to Kyiv, took her PhD in 1950 under **Boris Gnedenko** at the Institute of Mathematics, and spent 1950–57 as senior researcher there — including as a member of the group that *operated* [[MESM]]. Writing machine code for MESM convinced her that raw machine language could not carry the complex tasks being demanded of it; the answer, formalized with help from Kyiv University professor **L. I. Kaluzhnin**'s work on program-interfacing schemes, was the address language of 1955, built with colleague Vladimir Korolyuk on two principles of machine operation: **program control** and **addressing**.[[cite: en.wikipedia; NASU]]

## The Address language in brief

- 1955 — created by Yushchenko (with Korolyuk; Kaluzhnin's formalization)

- Two foundations: **program control** and **addressing** — including *addresses of second and higher ranks*

- Free relocation of a program in memory — a feature most languages took decades to acquire

- Implemented on the Kiev, Ural, M-20, Minsk, [[Dnipro computer|Dnipro]], Promin and essentially all first- and second-generation Soviet machines; in service for nearly twenty years

- Used for aviation, space, machine building, and defense work — including ballistic-missile trajectory calculations

- Western languages only acquired pointers with PL/I (1964)

Her 1963 book *Адресное программирование* (286 pp) codified the system; the textbook *Elements of Programming* (with Gnedenko and Korolyuk) appeared in German (1964), Hungarian (1964), and French (1969, Dunod). With Glushkov she wrote the 1962 mathematical description of the Kiev computer — translated by the US Air Force in 1966.[[cite: en.wikipedia booklist; FTD-TT-65-972]]

## Recognition

She died on 15 August 2001, aged 81.

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## References

- NASU — "Пам'яті К. Л. Ющенко" (2001 memorial bulletin); "винахідниця Pointers" profile

- Yushchenko, *Адресное программирование* (1963); Gnedenko/Korolyuk/Yushchenko, *Elements of Programming*

- Glushkov & Yushchenko, *The Kiev Computer: A Mathematical Description* (1962; FTD trans. 1966)

## See also

- [[Address programming language]] — her creation

- [[Kiev computer]] · [[MESM]] · [[Dnipro computer]]

- [[Victor Glushkov]] · [[Boris Gnedenko]]

[[Category:People]]

[[Category:Programmers]]

[[Category:Women in computing]]

[[Category:Computer science]]