Joan Fischer Targ (July 8, 1937[1][2] – June 2, 1998) was an American educator who was an early proponent of computer literacy and initiated peer tutoring programs for students of all ages.
Joan Fischer was born in Moscow, Soviet Union in 1937 to Hans-Gerhardt Fischer, a German-born biophysicist,[3] and his wife, Regina Wender Fischer, a Swiss-born naturalized American citizen of Russian-Jewish and Polish-Jewish ancestry.
Regina Fischer left Moscow because of the persecution of Jews in the 1930s, bringing her child with her to the United States. She spoke seven languages fluently and was a teacher, registered nurse, and eventually a physician.[4][5]
After living in several cities in various parts of the United States, in 1948, the family moved to Brooklyn, where Regina worked as an elementary school teacher and nurse. One year later, in Brooklyn, Joan taught her younger brother, future chess world champion Bobby Fischer, to play chess.[6][7]
Her educational techniques included the creation of peer tutoring systems whereby a student, trained by peers in an introductory course in computer programming, would then tutor the following students. In the early 1980s, she created and led a program sponsored by Stanford University in which high school students taught elementary school teachers the basics of programming.[10][11][12]
One focus of her work was bringing computer literacy to girls, senior citizens, and other underrepresented groups in computing.[13]
She coauthored the book Ready, run, fun: IBM PC edition with Jeff Levinsky.[14]
Joan Targ was noted for her activism for organic farming, having built an organic farm soon after she married Russell Targ in 1958. In 1976, she, her husband, and another family bought 80 acres of land in Portola Valley, and they hoped to turn it into another such farm; a lawsuit from her neighbors attempting to block this use was settled in her favor shortly before her death.[7]
^ ab"Bobby Fischer". Chess Life. 54 (1–6). United States Chess Federation: 357. 1999. In June of last year, Bobby Fischer's sister, Joan Fischer Targ, died at the age of 60 of a cerebral hemorrhage. She taught Bobby how to play chess.
^"Computer literacy". Personal Computer Magazine. 2 (1–2): 153. 1983. Probably the person who's doing more than anyone for computer parity for girls (and minority boys, and senior citizens, and disabled people, and anyone else who needs it) is Joan Fischer Targ of Palo Alto, CA.
^Targ, Russell (2010), Do You See What I See? Memoirs of a Blind Biker, Hampton Roads Publishing, p. xxxi, ISBN9781612830070. This page from the preface quotes Martin Gardner writing in The Skeptical Inquirer in 2001: "William Targ's beliefs in the paranormal trickled down to his son Russell, and now they have descended on Russell's attractive and energetic daughter Elisabeth. Her mother, Joan, by the way, is the sister of chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer."
Additional sources
Anything to Win: The Mad Genius of Bobby Fischer, television documentary, produced by Frank Sinton and Anthony Storm