Kateryna Yushchenko (1919–2001) was a Ukrainian computer scientist and one of the pioneers of programming. She became the first woman in the USSR to earn a Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences degree in the field of programming.

In 1955, Yushchenko developed the Address Programming Language — one of the world’s earliest high-level programming languages. It introduced indirect addressing, allowing programs to operate independently of the physical location of data in computer memory. This principle later became foundational for many modern programming languages. The Address Language was even used in control systems for space missions, including the joint Apollo–Soyuz mission in 1975.

Yushchenko was among the first programmers to work on the Small Electronic Computing Machine (MESM), one of the earliest computers, which occupied an entire room. She developed algorithms for data processing at a time when computing technology was still in its infancy.

Over the years, she played a key role in advancing computer science in Ukraine and founded what became known as the Kyiv School of Programming. She was also a dedicated educator, teaching for many years at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv State University and mentoring generations of Ukrainian programmers. Throughout her academic career, she supervised 47 PhD candidates and 11 doctoral researchers — many of them women. Some of her students later became full and corresponding members of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

In 1961, together with Borys Gnedenko and Volodymyr Korolyuk, she co-authored Elements of Programming, widely recognized as the world’s first textbook on programming.

Her contribution to computer science has received international recognition: Kateryna Yushchenko’s portrait is displayed at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom, and she is acknowledged among the founders of programming as a discipline.