Editing Barbara Simons (section)

== Early life ==
Simons was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. In high school, she developed an interest for math and science while taking A.P. Math classes. She attended [[Wellesley College]] for a year, before moving to [[California]] in 1959 to resume her undergraduate education at [[University of California, Berkeley|Berkeley]]. There, she married [[James Harris Simons]].<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.forbes.com/profile/james-simons/|title=James Simons|work=Forbes|access-date=2018-04-30|language=en}}</ref> At the beginning of her junior year she gave birth to a daughter, Liz, and dropped out of Berkeley shortly thereafter to become a mother and a housewife. In this time she decided to pursue a profession in Computer Programming, and began taking computer science classes part-time, before enrolling in graduate school at [[Stony Brook University]].<ref name=":7">{{Cite news|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/guardian-of-the-vote/544155/|title=Meet the Computer Scientist Championing Paper Ballots|last=Leovy|first=Jill|work=The Atlantic|access-date=2018-04-30|language=en-US}}</ref><ref name=":2" /> After a year of graduate school there, she and [[James Harris Simons]] divorced in 1974.<ref name=":5">Teitlebaum, R. (2008, January). The Code Breaker. ''Bloomberg Magazine''.</ref>

Simons transferred back to [[University of California, Berkeley|Berkeley]] for the remainder of graduate school, where she concentrated on studying [[Scheduling (computing)|scheduling theory]] and helped co-found the Women in Computer Science and Engineering club (WiCSE).<ref name=":2">{{Cite news|url=https://engineering.berkeley.edu/2018/03/qa-barbara-simons|title=Q&A with Barbara Simons|date=2018-03-16|work=Berkeley Engineering|access-date=2018-04-24|language=en}}</ref> In 1981, she received her Ph.D. in Computer Science. She received a Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from Berkeley's [[UC Berkeley College of Engineering|College of Engineering]].<ref name=":2" />