The Cherokee Mathematician Who Helped Design America’s Space Age – While Much Of Her Work Remained Secret
You cannot see the spacecraft you are calculating trajectories for.
You cannot see the planet you are computing arrival conditions at.
You are working with equations and parameters and physical models, in a world of abstraction, with the knowledge that if the abstraction is right, the physical reality that will eventually exist will conform to it.
Mary Ross was good at that abstraction.
She was good at it for thirty-one years, in one of the most demanding environments in American aerospace.
And the physical realities that have conformed to the mathematics she helped develop include some of the most remarkable things human beings have ever done.
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