Dame Vera Stephanie "Steve" Shirley CH DBE FREng FBCS (née Buchthal; born 16 September 1933) is a British information technology pioneer, businesswoman and philanthropist.\n', '

Shirley was born as Vera Buchthal to Arnold Buchthal, a judge in Dortmund who was Jewish and who lost his post to the Nazi regime, and a non-Jewish Viennese mother. In July 1939, Shirley arrived at the age of five together with her nine-year-old sister Renate, to Britain as a Kindertransport child refugee. She was placed in the care of foster parents living in the Midlands town of Sutton Coldfield. She was later re-united with her biological parents, but said she "never really bonded with them".\n', '

After attending a convent school, she moved to Oswestry, near the Welsh border, where she attended the Oswestry Girls\' High School. Mathematics was not taught at the school, so she received permission after assessment to take those lessons at the local boys school. She would later recall that, after her Kindertransport and wartime experiences, "in Oswestry I had six wonderful years of peace".\n', '

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