Mary Kircher
| Mary Kircher | |
|---|---|
| Born | 5 November 1929 (aged 89) New Jersey, United States |
| 🏡 Residence | Albuquerque, New Mexico |
| 🎓 Alma mater | Clark University, 1950 |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| 👔 Employer | Los Alamos National Laboratory |
| 👩 Spouse(s) | John Kircher |
| 👶 Children | 6 |
Mary Kircher, (born Mary J. Hunsberger Nov. 5 1929- )[1] worked for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) as a programmer on the MANIAC I[2]. In this role she was one of the first women to transition from computing work to programming at LANL[1].
Early life and education[edit]
Mary Jane Hunsberger was born on November 5th, 1929 in Maplewood, New Jersey to Allen T. and Alice A. Hunsberger.[3] Her father was a factory manager, and her family moved to Middletown, Connecticut when she was the age of 13, and she graduated from high school in 1947.[1]
She attended Clark University and graduated with her degree in Mathematics[1] in 1950.[4] She graduated from college in three years, instead of the four more typical in the United States, because she attended summer school.[1]
Career[edit]
Work Before Los Alamos[edit]
Mary Hunsburger, upon graduation from college, began working at an insurance company in Boston, Massachusetts. She reported dissatisfaction with this line of work, and she applied to a job at LANL in 1951 while she was working for this insurance company. She was offered an interview and was flown to New Mexico from Boston at no personal expense.[5]
Work at LANL[edit]
Before the MANIAC I[edit]
Upon accepting a position at LANL, Hunsberger began working in February of 1952 in the Calculations Group.[1] In this position she operated a mechanical calculator, as the laboratory had not yet finished constructing the MANIAC I. She did not have security clearance, so she and her coworkers were not made aware of the applications of their calculations.[1]
The MANIAC I[edit]
Mary Kircher began working on the MANIAC I later that year.[1] She, as well as the other programmers for the project, was trained to program for the MANIAC I by its primary architect, Jack Jackson.[1][6] One of the first problems that the MANIAC I engaged with with the identification of prime numbers, and Kircher recalls that when the program was run the computer output the number "25."[1] "25" as a hexadecimal number corresponds to "37" in decimal, which is a prime number.
One of Kircher's responsibilities as a programmer for the MANIAC I was the creation of flow diagrams for the operation of the machine.[1][6] The MANIAC I worked on a variety of problems including, but not limited to:
- Pion-Proton Scattering[7]
- Modeling vibration patterns with non-linear chains[7]
- The first computer program designed to play chess[7]
- Research into the Monte Carlo method[7]
Later Work[edit]
Upon her return to LANL in 1972, Kircher worked for the physicist Wallace Leland.[1] Leland conducted particle physics research[8], and Kircher provided the programming and calculations required for his research, which included research into the applications of laser stimulated nuclear fission for power generation.[1] The MANIAC I had been retired by this point[6], so Kircher utilized LANL's Central Computing Facility (CCF), which ran Fortran, and Hewlett-Packard produced minicomputers that ran a variety of languages, includingBASIC.[1]
Retirement[edit]
Mary Kircher retired from Los Alamos in 1987.[1] She was predeceased by her son C. Paul Kircher, who died on October 29th 2002,[9] and her husband John Kircher, who died on March 2nd, 2004.[10]
Personal life[edit]
Mary Hunsburger met her future husband John Kircher, a chemical engineer who worked with Uranium, in 1952 at a party for the 6th anniversary of his employment at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).[1] They began dating and later married. Mary Kircher ceased work at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1954 to raise her first child, and she remained out of the workforce to raise a total of six children between the years of 1954 and 1972.[1] After returning to the workforce in 1972, Kircher remained at LANL until her retirement in 1987.[1]
See Also[edit]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 "Oral-History:Mary Kircher - Engineering and Technology History Wiki". ethw.org. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
- ↑ Abbate, Janet (2012-10-19). Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262304535. Search this book on
- ↑ "Ancestry Library Edition". search.ancestrylibrary.com. Retrieved 2018-04-18.
- ↑ "Honor Roll". Clark University. 2016-11-29. Retrieved 2018-03-27.
- ↑ Gender codes : why women are leaving computing. Misa, Thomas J. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. 2010. ISBN 9780470597194. OCLC 654818338. Search this book on
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Computing at LASL in the 1940s and 1950s. Department of Energy. 1978. Search this book on
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Harlow, Francis; Nicholas, Metropolis (Winter 1983). "Computing & Computers: Weapons Simulation Leads to the Computer Era". Los Alamos Science. No. 7: 132–141.
- ↑ Writer, DAVID PIERCE,Pocono Record. "Retired ESU professor discusses nuclear warfare: its history, its future and his father's role in the first two bombs". poconorecord.com. Retrieved 2018-04-04.
- ↑ "Albuquerque Journal Obituaries". obits.abqjournal.com. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
- ↑ "Albuquerque Journal Obituaries". obits.abqjournal.com. Retrieved 2018-03-25.
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