Cynthia Harvey-Murray, a retired Morgan State University professor and a pioneer in computer engineering, died of heart failure July 31 at Manor Care Health Services in Roland Park.

The longtime Forest Park resident was 87.

Born in Baltimore, Cynthia Camper was the daughter of Dr. Douglas Camper, a dentist active in Baltimore's civil rights movement, and Naomi Daugherty.

She was a descendant of William Coulbourne, who owned a St. Michaels seafood canning business, Coulbourne-Jewett, and whose home is now a gift shop at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Her family's seafood firm created the crab meat grading system — regular, claw, special, backfin and lump — which remains in use today.

Raised on Carrollton Avenue in Sandtown, she attended Booker T. Washington Junior High School and was a 1946 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School.

Although she was interested in art and ballet, she followed her family's advice to pursue science. She earned a mathematics degree from West Virginia State College, then a master's degree from the Johns Hopkins University.

“When she graduated college and was reading the want ads to find a job, she found that those listed for a woman were mostly for secretarial posts,” said her daughter, Michelle Harvey Hill of Dewitt, Mich. “She didn't like that and went to ads listed for men.

“This was the way she lived her life,” her daughter said. “She did what she wanted to do.”

Family members said she was a pioneering African-American mathematician who worked at the David Taylor Model Basin at the Naval Surface Research Center at Carderock, near Bethesda.

She assisted with a wind tunnel test facility, and in 1952 joined a team that built a computer for her research lab. In this capacity, she was the first programmer and author of the programming primer.

From 1955 to 1962, Mrs. Harvey-Murray worked at Westinghouse Electric Defense and Space Center at Linthicum, where was also a pioneering African-American female engineer and was supervisor of its analytical engineering section.

Family members said she encountered racial slights at work. They said she could understand slurs made by German-speaking colleagues because she spoke German. When she heard a remark about her, she would turn and tell them: “I understand you.”

“My mom was not one to let the slights get in the way, and she did not dwell on them,” said her son, Lamont Weston Harvey of Elkridge. “She always progressed forward.”

While at Westinghouse, she met her future husband, Arthur Harvey, who was also an engineer.

She was featured in the May 1959 issue of Sepia magazine in an article titled “She Calculates for Missiles: Baltimore mother does top-secret work involving U.S. rocket program.”

In 1965 she joined the faculty at what is now Morgan State University and founded a computer science degree program. Beginning in the early 1980s, she worked to connect the school's facilities to various computer networks and the internet.

“My mother was an adviser to the Society for the Advancement of Computer Science since 1966. She helped start the careers of thousands of students and future professionals,” said her son.

From 1993 to 1995, Mrs. Harvey-Murray was technical coordinator for the Minority Universities Space Interdisciplinary Network at NASA's Goddard Space Flight in Greenbelt.

In 1995, she appeared in a documentary on public television called “Minerva's Machine: Women and Computing.” Her segment highlighted her career as a computer scientist.

“It was an in-depth treatment, and featured her as one of the most important women pioneers in the field of computing and computer science,” said her son.

After the death of her husband in 1991, she married Winston Murray, who was on the Morgan faculty.

Together, they co-founded the Carib-American Research Institute. Family members said the institute fostered the founding of Tobago Community College in Trinidad and Tobago.

She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the Morgan State University Women and the Charms. She was also a former board member of the Young Victorian Theater Company.

She was a competitive bridge player and won numerous trophies. She also enjoyed ballet, history, philosophy, law, languages and art.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. today at the Christian Center at Morgan State University, Hillen Road.

In addition to her son and daughter, survivors include her husband of 19 years; another son, Irvin Cannaday III of Pikesville; eight grandchildren; and three great grandchildren. Her marriage to Irvin Cannaday Jr. ended in divorce.

jacques.kelly@baltsun.com