Margaret Kampschaefer Butler (March 27, 1924 – March 8, 2013) was a

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

who participated in creating and updating

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

. During the early 1950s, Butler contributed to the development of

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. Butler was the first female fellow at the

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and director of the National Energy Software Center at Argonne. Butler held leadership positions within multiple scientific organizations and women's groups. She was the creator and director of the National Energy Software Center. Here, Butler operated an exchange for the editing of computer programs in regards to

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...

and developed early principles for computer technology."Mothers and Daughters of Invention." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 December 2014.

Early life and education

Butler was born on March 27, 1924, in Evansville, Indiana. She studied statistics and differential calculus at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

and graduated in 1944.

Career

Butler began her career in 1944 working as a statistician at the

Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of t ...

. While she worked there, she also taught math at the

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Graduate School and took graduate courses related to sampling theory. About a year later, she joined the

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and worked as a civilian in Germany. She returned to the United States after two years and began working in the Naval Reactors Division of

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...

as a junior mathematician. While working at Argonne, Butler made calculations for physicists creating a prototype for a submarine reactor and attended

atomic physics Atomic physics is the field of physics that studies atoms as an isolated system of electrons and an atomic nucleus. Atomic physics typically refers to the study of atomic structure and the interaction between atoms. It is primarily concerned wit ...

and reactor design classes. In 1949, she worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Minnesota but returned to Argonne National Laboratory in 1951. Following her return to Argonne, Butler became an assistant mathematician in the Reactor Engineering Division and worked on

AVIDAC The AVIDAC or ''Argonne Version of the Institute's Digital Automatic Computer'', an early computer built by Argonne National Laboratory, was partially based on the IAS architecture developed by John von Neumann. It was built by the Laboratory's Ph ...

, an early computer. In the 1950s she wrote software, reactor applications, mathematical subroutines, and

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for three other Argonne computers, the

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, and

UNIVAC UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company an ...

. Butler led Argonne's Applied Mathematics Division's Application Programming from 1959 to 1965. While working in this department, she developed teams to fix program problems in reactors, biology, chemistry, physics, management, and high energy physics applications. In 1960, she worked with others to establish the Argonne Code Center, which later became the National Energy Software Center (NESC). Butler would later become director of the NESC from 1972–1991. She became the first woman to be named fellow of the American Nuclear Society in 1972, following her nomination a year earlier. She was also a consultant to the European Nuclear Energy Agency during the time it was establishing its computer program. In 1980, Butler was promoted to Senior Computer Scientist at Argonne. She officially retired in 1991, but continued to work at Argonne from 1993 to 2006 as a "special term appointee".

Impact

During her time in Argonne, Butler was very supportive of her female coworkers. Women working at Argonne described her as a role model with a welcoming presence. According to her son Jay, she thought women were "given all the responsibilities and none of the authorities" and had to work "harder and smarter" yet were still not treated as individuals. When Butler rose in the ranks at Argonne, she made sure to hire women and recommend them for promotions. She worked with other women to organize an

Association for Women in Science The Association for Women in Science (AWIS) was founded in 1971 at the annual Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) meeting. The organization aims to combat job discrimination, lower pay, and professional isolation. The ...

in Chicago. While in AWIS, she held executive board positions and led two conferences for high school students, teachers, and administration. The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility established the Margaret Butler Fellowship in Computational Science, a postdoctoral fellowship in her honor.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Butler, Margaret K. 1924 births 2013 deaths American women mathematicians Women statisticians American women computer scientists American computer scientists People from Evansville, Indiana Indiana University alumni 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Argonne National Laboratory people 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians American statisticians 20th-century American women 21st-century American women United States Army Air Forces civilians United States Army women civilians