I received the inquiry below from historian of mathematics Judy Green, who is trying to research the career of Esther Gersten, one of the ENIAC programmers at Aberdeen. If anyone has information about Gersten, or experience accessing archival materials from BRL (now ARL), please respond directly to Judy (jgreen@marymount.edu). FYI, she is the co-author of Pioneering Women in American Mathematics (AMS, 2008). thanks, Janet Dr. Janet Abbate Associate Professor Science & Technology in Society Virginia Tech Begin forwarded message:
From: Judy Green <jgreen@marymount.edu> Date: September 16, 2012 5:43:37 PM EDT To: abbate@vt.edu Subject: The history of computing in the 1940s and early 1950s
Dear Janet Abbate,
I'm a retired mathematician whose research interest is mainly in the history of American women in mathematics and am an author, together with Jeanne LaDuke, of a book on American women who received PhD's im mathematics before WWII. Because of that book I was asked to, and did, review the video “Top Secret Rosies” for the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. A niece of a woman who had an undergraduate mathematics degree and worked on the ENIAC at Aberdeen and on the first UNIVAC at U Calif's Radiation Lab at Livermore ran into that review and contacted me about her aunt, who died in 1955. The woman's name is Esther Gersten and she is briefly mentioned (as Ester Gersten) in Barkley Fritz's ENIAC articles in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. Gersten's niece has a picture taken at Aberdeen in January 1946 as well as a lot of letters from between Gersten and her family. I've become interested and have started to write a short piece about Gersten. However, as I am not as familiar with the resources in the history of computing as I am with those in the history of mathematics, Peggy Kidwell, whom I know through the Smithsonian where I was a research associate many years ago and am now a volunteer, suggested I contact you with my questions. I hope you will be able to point me in the right direction in getting some more information about Esther Gersten.
Specifically, what I would most like to find is the equivalent of a CV for her. As far as I know, the only places she worked were at the BRL at Aberdeenthe and at Lawrence Livermore. While the Smithsonian has some photographs of the computers and people who worked on them at Aberdeen, they don't have the one that her family has. If the BRL photos and/or records are open I'd really like to take a look at them too.
Thanks very much. Judy Green