The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

by Walter Isaacson

Unlike most math professors, she insisted that her students be able to write well. In her probability course, she began with a lecture on one of her favorite mathematical formulasI and asked her students to write an essay about it. These she would mark for clarity of writing and style. “I’d cover [an essay] up with ink, and I would get a rebellion that they were taking a math course not an English course,” she recalled. “Then I would explain, it was no use trying to learn math unless they could communicate it with other people.”4 Throughout her life, she excelled at being able to translate scientific problems—such as those involving trajectories, fluid flows, explosions, and weather patterns—into mathematical equations and then into ordinary English. This talent helped to make her a good programmer.