Cecilia Berdichevsky, Clementina expert (1961)

This profile recounts the life and career of Cecilia Berdichevsky (born Mirjam Tuwjasz, 1925-2010), an Argentine computer scientist who was a pioneer in bringing large-scale scientific computing to Argentina. After emigrating from Poland to Avellaneda as a child, she studied mathematics at the University of Buenos Aires under Manuel Sadosky and became one of the first programmers of the Ferranti Mercury computer - nicknamed Clementina - when it arrived in Buenos Aires in 1961. She trained with Cicely Popplewell (who had worked with Alan Turing) and Ernesto García Camarero, wrote and ran early programs using punched paper ribbon input, and became expert in the Mercury’s software ecosystem, including machine code, the Pig2 assembler, and high-level compilers Autocode and later Comic. The Mercury was a large, costly, single-operation machine limited to basic arithmetic operations, and Berdichevsky earned international scholarships to study in London and France to deepen her expertise.

Her career was interrupted by the 1966 military coup and the Night of the Long Batons, after which she worked in industry and co-directed Scientific Technical Advisors with former colleagues. In 1984 she became Deputy General Manager of Caja de Ahorro overseeing its computer center and represented Argentina at the International Federation for Information Processing. She remained an active consultant on international projects including UNDP initiatives, published a retrospective on Clementina and the beginnings of computing in Argentina, and died in Avellaneda in 2010.