Frances Elizabeth "Fran" Allen (born August 4, 1932) is an American computer scientist and pioneer in the field of optimizing compilers. Her achievements include seminal work in compilers, code optimization, and parallelization. She also had a role in intelligence work on programming languages and security codes for the National Security Agency.[2][3] Allen was the first female IBM Fellow and in 2006 became the first woman to win the Turing Award.