Mary Tsingou (married name: Mary Tsingou-Menzel; born October 14, 1928) is an American physicist and mathematician of

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

descent. She was one of the first programmers on the

MANIAC Maniac (from Greek μανιακός, ''maniakos'') is a pejorative for an individual who experiences the mood known as mania. In common usage, it is also an insult for someone involved in reckless behavior. Maniac may also refer to: Film * ' ...

computer at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

and is best known for having coded the celebrated computer experiment with Enrico Fermi,

John Pasta John Robert Pasta (October 22, 1918 – June 5, 1981) was an American computational physicist and computer scientist who is remembered today for the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou experiment, the result of which was much discussed among physic ...

, and Stanislaw Ulam which became an inspiration for the fields of chaos theory and

scientific computing Computational science, also known as scientific computing or scientific computation (SC), is a field in mathematics that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems. It is an area of science that spans many disc ...

and was a turning point in

soliton In mathematics and physics, a soliton or solitary wave is a self-reinforcing wave packet that maintains its shape while it propagates at a constant velocity. Solitons are caused by a cancellation of nonlinear and dispersive effects in the medi ...

theory.

Life

Mary Tsingou was born in

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...

, her Greek parents having moved to the US from

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the family left the US to spend several years in Bulgaria. In 1940, they returned to the US, where Tsingou attended high school and college. She graduated in mathematics and education in 1951 from the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

. She then studied at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, receiving a master's degree in mathematics in 1955. In 1958, she married Joseph Menzel.

Career

Tsingou joined the T1 division of the

, then transferred to the T7, where she became one of the first programmers on the

. Besides working on weapons, the group also studied fundamental physics. Following Fermi's suggestion to analyze numerically the predictions of a statistical model of solids, Tsingou came up with an algorithm to simulate the relaxation of energy in a model crystal, which she implemented on the MANIAC. The analysis became known in the computational physics community as the

Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem In physics, the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou problem or formerly the Fermi–Pasta–Ulam problem was the apparent paradox in chaos theory that many complicated enough physical systems exhibited almost exactly periodic behavior – called Fermi ...

(FPUT), and Tsingou's contributions have since been recognised. The result was an important stepping stone for chaos theory. After Fermi's death, James L. Tuck and Tsingou-Menzel repeated the original FPU results and provided strong indication that the nonlinear FPU problem might be integrable. Tsingou-Menzel continued her computational career at Los Alamos. She was an early expert on Fortran. In the 1980s, she worked on calculations in the Star Wars program. She retired in 1991.

Recognition

In 2008, an article published in ''

Physics Today ''Physics Today'' is the membership magazine of the American Institute of Physics. First published in May 1948, it is issued on a monthly schedule, and is provided to the members of ten physics societies, including the American Physical Society. ...

'' called to rename the FPU problem to the FPUT problem to give her proper credit for her contribution. Subsequent publications referencing the FPUT problem reflect this change. In 2020, National Security Science magazine, published by

, featured an article on Tsingou that included her commentary and historical reflections on the FPUT problem. The article was titled "We thank Miss Mary Tsingou" in reference to the acknowledgement that appeared on the title page of the original FPUT technical report from 1955.

Publications

* * Joseph J. Devaney, Albert G. Petschek, Mary Tsingou Menzel
On the Production of Heavy Uranium Isotopes in a Very High Density Fast Neutron Flux
(accessed Dec. 2012). Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory of the University of California, 1958; 17 pages.

References

External links

Pioneer Women in Chaos Theory.
Frank Y. Wang.
The Fermi–Pasta–Ulam “numerical experiment”: history and pedagogical perspectives.
Dauxois, Peyrard and Ruffo.
A not-so-mysterious woman
''Los Alamos Monitor'' online.

Philosophy of Science Portal, A Venue for Discussions of Science, Philosophy and the Arts
Mary Tsingou-Menzel Oral History
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tsingou, Mary 1928 births Living people American women mathematicians Scientific computing researchers Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel Numerical analysts American women physicists 20th-century American physicists 20th-century American mathematicians 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American physicists 21st-century American mathematicians 21st-century American women scientists American people of Greek descent People from Milwaukee Scientists from Wisconsin Mathematicians from Wisconsin 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians American expatriates in Bulgaria