Hello Science Talk audience!
I am the host of Lost Women of Science. The life and work of one scientist who hasn't gotten the recognition she deserves is the focus of each season.
We are calling this season A Grasshopper in Very Tall Grass, and it is all about Klara Dan von Neumann. One of the world's first computer programmers was called Klari.
I have been writing about computers for more than 30 years. In 1996, I wrote a history of the internet called Where Wizards Stay Up Late. And the wizards? All men.
I have been on this beat for a long time and I thought I knew all the major figures. I stumbled upon the name of the woman, and drew a blank. How had I missed her?
All of the big-hitters in the computer science world had the same answer when I asked about her.
I couldn't shake the feeling that this was a woman of computing who was connected to a lot of people. She worked for Los Alamos and was involved in nuclear weapons research.
She ran in a circle of famous scientists, including Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and her own husband, John von Neumann.
The dawn of electronic computers and nuclear warfare was something I thought Klari could teach us. We started digging. The result of what we found this season.
The trailer is here.
There is a trailer.
I don't know who Klara von Neumann is.
I'm embarrassed to say I've never heard of her.
She had something to do with the weather.
I have heard of John von Neumann.
I'm not sure how to say her name.
Was she related to Newman on the show?
We uncover the work of overlooked scientists on Lost Women of Science.
What Klara von Neumann is doing is helping to define what is possible on this new kind of machine.
RINA WHITMAN: She became a super programmer.
Their stories are often not known. Their contributions were unacknowledged.
The role of Klara was hidden because she worked on secret bomb calculations.
It was seen as not being important for women to be programmers and so they made a huge impact.
In 1947, it was Klara and her code that made nuclear weapons simulations possible.
The ground floor was the starting point for everyone because programming was a new discipline.
RINA WHITMAN said she liked puzzles. This was a puzzle.
At Los Alamos, she is like someone with no training in physics or mathematics talking one-on-one with the winners of the Nobel prize.
She was working with a brand new technology, deep inside a world forever changed by nuclear weapons.
This connection between death and computing is inescapable in this history.
We want to understand the origins of modern computing through the story of one extraordinary woman.
At the moment of creation, she was sort of there. She was holding the cradle if you look at it that way.
The second season of Lost Women of Science is coming on March 31st. You can listen wherever you like.
The end of the trailer.
This season will take us on a journey from wild parties in Hungary to gambling sprees in Monte Carlo to the academic world of Princeton and the wild west of Los Alamos. This pivotal moment in history is given color by Klari's eventful life.
Maybe five married people. The figure skating champion. A computer pioneer. How could we not have seen her?
Lost Women of Science will show you the full story of a grasshopper in tall grass.
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