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We thank Miss Mary Tsingou (2020)

89 points by alberto_ol 4y ago

macintux 4y ago
Remarkable story, and a remarkable career. Glad she’s getting more recognition.
nl 4y ago
> In 1951, Mary Tsingou was an undergraduate studying mathematics and education at the University of Wisconsin when an instructor told her, “They’re looking for women mathematicians at Los Alamos.” The Korean War was on, and the Lab had found that hiring and training men as mathematicians was mostly futile because they were so often drafted. Faced with a job market that was particularly tough for female math teachers, Tsingou decided to apply. She landed the job, and on January 7, 1952, she moved to Los Alamos. Imagine drafting mathematicians instead of sending them to the national security science laboratory at Los Almos! > Upon being hired, Tsingou was flatly informed that she and the other young women would be paid less than men with the same skills and qualifications because “men were breadwinners and women were just supplementary.” Imagine that being the standard. > By today’s standards in the scientific community, Mary Tsingou would have been an author on the paper— she might have even been the first author, the person who contributed the most to the project. Among those who agree with the renaming of the problem is David Campbell, Professor of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering at Boston University and former director of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos. It's good to see programmers given this recognition. In my experience these days most programmers can expect an author credit on a paper they wrote software for. Not sure about being first author though!
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  > Imagine that being the standard. You must have cognitive dissonance because it is the standard for children. Maybe in 100 years children will have the same rights as adults and people will feel exactly the same about us as you do about those olden days people.
nl 4y ago
There's a good interview transcript with here at [1]. This is a great quote: > And then, as I said, the Cray computers came along. They started with 150K of memory, or something like that, and everybody thought, “Boy, those are really [advanced]!” But even those, a lot of times, had problems on weekends. We’d have people run our problems, and we’d sign up for four or five hours for the problem to run, to get some results. Probably it wouldn’t even finish, and they dumped the data onto a tape, and the next weekend—because a lot of times long problems would not be run except on weekends—you would pick it up. Also, for your own sake, when you were running your problem, after an hour or two you would dump it—because in case the machine went down, you lost [your interim results] [1] https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Mary_Tsingou_Menzel https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Mary_Tsingou_Menzel
neilv 4y ago
Wikipedia is still unclear about how official is the renaming of the FPUT problem, and I guess that's determined by new publications using the new name? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Pasta%E2%80%93Ulam%E2%80%93Tsingou_problem#Name_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Pasta%E2%80%93Ul... Tsingou is 93, and it's great that she's lived to see this belated acknowledgement, and the progress (albeit slow) towards gender equality.
mwattsun 4y ago
Great article! I'm glad people are making an effort to update the historical record. Los Alamos is a special place that I enjoyed visiting recently because of the history. William S. Burroughs went to boarding school there and then later Feynman and all the rest came along. The landscape seems to leave a deep impression on everyone who spends time there. I'd always heard Taos was a magical place, but I felt that much more at Las Alamos.

89 points by alberto_ol 4y ago

Remarkable story, and a remarkable career. Glad she’s getting more recognition.

nl 4y ago

> In 1951, Mary Tsingou was an undergraduate studying mathematics and education at the University of Wisconsin when an instructor told her, “They’re looking for women mathematicians at Los Alamos.” The Korean War was on, and the Lab had found that hiring and training men as mathematicians was mostly futile because they were so often drafted. Faced with a job market that was particularly tough for female math teachers, Tsingou decided to apply. She landed the job, and on January 7, 1952, she moved to Los Alamos. Imagine drafting mathematicians instead of sending them to the national security science laboratory at Los Almos! > Upon being hired, Tsingou was flatly informed that she and the other young women would be paid less than men with the same skills and qualifications because “men were breadwinners and women were just supplementary.” Imagine that being the standard. > By today’s standards in the scientific community, Mary Tsingou would have been an author on the paper— she might have even been the first author, the person who contributed the most to the project. Among those who agree with the renaming of the problem is David Campbell, Professor of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering at Boston University and former director of the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos. It's good to see programmers given this recognition. In my experience these days most programmers can expect an author credit on a paper they wrote software for. Not sure about being first author though!

sacrosancty 4y ago
> Imagine that being the standard. You must have cognitive dissonance because it is the standard for children. Maybe in 100 years children will have the same rights as adults and people will feel exactly the same about us as you do about those olden days people.

nl 4y ago

There's a good interview transcript with here at [1]. This is a great quote: > And then, as I said, the Cray computers came along. They started with 150K of memory, or something like that, and everybody thought, “Boy, those are really [advanced]!” But even those, a lot of times, had problems on weekends. We’d have people run our problems, and we’d sign up for four or five hours for the problem to run, to get some results. Probably it wouldn’t even finish, and they dumped the data onto a tape, and the next weekend—because a lot of times long problems would not be run except on weekends—you would pick it up. Also, for your own sake, when you were running your problem, after an hour or two you would dump it—because in case the machine went down, you lost [your interim results] [1] https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Mary_Tsingou_Menzel https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Mary_Tsingou_Menzel

neilv 4y ago

Wikipedia is still unclear about how official is the renaming of the FPUT problem, and I guess that's determined by new publications using the new name? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Pasta%E2%80%93Ulam%E2%80%93Tsingou_problem#Name_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Pasta%E2%80%93Ul... Tsingou is 93, and it's great that she's lived to see this belated acknowledgement, and the progress (albeit slow) towards gender equality.

mwattsun 4y ago

Great article! I'm glad people are making an effort to update the historical record. Los Alamos is a special place that I enjoyed visiting recently because of the history. William S. Burroughs went to boarding school there and then later Feynman and all the rest came along. The landscape seems to leave a deep impression on everyone who spends time there. I'd always heard Taos was a magical place, but I felt that much more at Las Alamos.