I never heard of her either, but she was a physicist who worked on MANIAC1 at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico. MANIAC (“Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer”) was seven feet tall, 1000 pounds, and had 3,000 vacuum tubes. It could also make 10,000 calculations per second.
Mary Tsingou Menzel was an early coder and her coding work led to the creation in 1955 of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem, named after the men who worked on a numerical experiment.
She received some recognition in a 2008 article by a French physicist. The article was entitled “Fermi, Pasta, Ulam, and a Mysterious Lady.” Now the problem is entitled “Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou.”
Her parents were immigrants who spoke Greek at home. Because of her poor English she was held back, but her abilities soon bounced her up to her grade level. She got a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and a job at Los Alamos, where she was paid less than the men doing the same work. She went back to school and got a Masters degree from the University of Michigan.
She later did research for thermonuclear devices and worked on the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Today she would be criticized by Vice President Vance for not being a “trad wife.” Her parents, were they still alive, would be deported, probably to El Salvador.
All the information for this post except the speculation in the last paragraph is from an obituary by Ama Sarpomaa, “Mary Tsingou Menzel, a Physicist Credited After 50 Years, dies at 97,” New York Times, (Oct. 14, 2026), p. B-11.
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