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The Hidden Heroines of Chaos [Quanta] - mklabgr - 06-18-2026
The Hidden Heroines of Chaos [Quanta]
Summary
The article “The Hidden Heroines of Chaos” reveals the overlooked contributions of two women programmers, Margaret Hamilton and Ellen Fetter, to the discovery of chaos theory. While Edward Norton Lorenz is widely credited for discovering the butterfly effect and the Lorenz attractor, the article explains that Hamilton and Fetter wrote the programs and performed the numerical computations that allowed the groundbreaking experiments on the early LGP-30 computer at MIT.
Their work showed that tiny changes in initial conditions could produce dramatically different outcomes, a key idea behind chaos theory. The story also highlights how early computer programming—especially work done by women—was often undervalued and forgotten, despite being essential to scientific discoveries, and argues for a more complete recognition of the people behind modern computational science.
ARTICLE