On September 4th 1996, 79-year-old Joan Clarke, of London, England, passed away peacefully. Joan was born to parents Arthur and Gwen on February 17th 1917. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, and took a double first in mathematics in 1938 – a remarkable feat at that time for a woman. During World War II, Joan was recruited by the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, where she worked as a cryptanalyst on the German Enigma and Lorenz cipher machines. Her achievements there earned her recognition as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the year 1945. After the war, Joan obtained a research fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge, and later joined the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester in 1953. Success followed Joan in 1960, when she joined London’s Royal Society of Arts development team, where she helped created the world’s first stored-program computer, and is credited with numerous significant innovations in the field of computer science. Joan lived a life of adventure, filled with a keen appreciation for science, art, and the outdoors. She had an impact on many, and will be remembered for her passion in life: changing the world for the better. She is survived by her son John.