Evelyn Berezin died in Manhattan, New York, at the age of 93.
Evelyn Berezin died on December 8, 2018, in Manhattan, New York, at the age of 93. Her death prompted a wave of obituaries and tributes in major publications, including The Guardian and the New York Times, which recognized her as a pioneering computer engineer and entrepreneur whose contributions had long been underappreciated relative to their significance.
By the time of her death, Berezin's legacy as the inventor behind the Data Secretary—one of the first computerized word processors—and as the designer of early real-time computing systems for banking and airline reservations had become more widely acknowledged, thanks in part to renewed historical interest in the hidden contributions of women to computing.
Obituaries emphasized how her work at Redactron Corporation, which she co-founded and led as CEO, made her one of the first women to found and run a technology company in the United States, at a time when women were almost entirely absent from executive leadership in the computer industry. Her death marked the end of a remarkable life that spanned from the Bronx during the Depression era to the founding of a company that helped transform how the world's offices functioned. Posthumously, her achievements would be further cemented with her 2022 induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, ensuring her place in the historical record of American innovation.