That complexity is the model.

Not the simplified version.

The real one, with its gaps and its uncertainties and its documented achievements and its honest unknowns.

She was a Cherokee mathematician who helped build the mathematical foundations of the American space age.

That is the record.

That is what can be known.

And it is enough to establish, beyond any reasonable dispute, that she was one of the more remarkable people in the history of American aerospace — and one of the most important figures in the specific, specific history of what Cherokee intellectual tradition and Cherokee educational commitment have produced in the modern world.

Her great-great-grandfather led his people through the worst crisis their nation had ever faced.