Maria Klawe in The L.A. Times

The Los Angeles Times has a write up of the life and times of Maria Klawe, HMC's President. There isn't anything really new there, but it's a useful link if you want a one-stop shop for the presidente del la norte. 

I wonder how the Harvey Mudd students, many of whom are Linux fans, take it that now that Klawe has joined that evil, evil, man Bill Gates on the board of Microsoft. Klawe admits to fraternizing with the enemy. She says, "Heaven for college presidents is when you can get to talk to Bill Gates about your college." Sounds like a collaborator to me! 

As is typical of Klawe, she can't resist mentioning women in science. 

She says, 

On women in science: When she first began working in computer science in the 1970s and '80s, roughly 30% of the students were female. Now only about 15% are female. "The image of what a computer scientist is -- it's not something that appeals to women. In the early days, people thought it was mathematics and typing, and there wasn't this image barrier."

Klawe's right about the declining numbers of women deciding to become computer scientists, but I have to wonder if it is actually an image barrier or something else. I have put forward my borrowed idea from Thomas Sowell -- that it is about rates of obsolescence in information and that pregnancy tends to be hard on women in start ups.