Nell Dale
The University of Texas at Austin
June 26, 2005
Interviewed by Leslie Schwartzman
Roosevelt University
Segment length 4 minutes, 3.8 mb
File name:  Dale26select.mp3
Transcript edited by Nell Dale


LS:  This is being recorded on June 26{2006} in Lisbon, Portugal.  I am Leslie Schwartzman and I am interviewing Nell Dale.  And would you just tell just us your name exactly and where you come from?

ND:  My name was originally Nell Boylan and so it’s Nell Boylan Dale and I have no middle name so my maiden name became my middle name.  And I was born in Savannah, Georgia, but my father was a career army officer so I came from everywhere and then finally ended up in Texas.

LS:  You have a southern accent.

ND:  I have a generic southern accent.

LS: Uh

ND:  I can go deep south if I need to.
{distorted short segment}
ND:  I have an undergraduate degree in mathematics and psychology and I went immediately from undergraduate school to work on a master’s.  I had gotten my undergraduate degree at night school and so I wanted to be a full time student. I went to the University of Texas at Austin to get a master’s in mathematics.  And then before I finished my thesis I went to Houston and worked for Shell Development Corporation and I had a great love for Shell because I did a lot of interviewing before I took that job. This was in 1961 and I remember two job applications, one in which they were going to invite me back for that second interview.  I had finished my master’s program and I had fallen in love with computing and out of love with mathematics.  So there was math and there was computing and I got called back and they said don’t bother for the second interview. The rest of the staff feels that they could not work for a woman.   Then there was an interview that was set up and the gentleman’s secretary called and said “He just realized you were a woman.  He thought the name was Neil and not Nell so don’t bother to come.”  And then I went to work for Shell Development, a wonderful organization. I had a change of supervisors from a woman to a man at the end of two months, and the man called me in and said “I have looked at your resume and   Ernie Jones’s resume.  You have the same background and they pay him more.  So I am giving you a raise retroactively.”  So I always tell my best students to Shell. 

I spent two years working for Shell and then married and went back to the University of Texas and worked at the Linguistics Research Center which was involved in language translation.  And that was great fun, and then the Computer Science Department was formed at the University of Texas. I had finished my master’s thesis while I was there at the Linguistics Research Center.  I got intrigued by what this new department was going to be.   It was made up of people from linguistics and psychology and mathematics and engineering, and the general topic really intrigued me and so I applied and was one of the first three PhD candidates in that department.