Ellen Fetter facts for kids

Ellen Cole Fetter Gille is an American computer scientist. She is known for her important work with Edward Norton Lorenz on chaos theory.

Early Life and Education

Ellen Fetter was born to Frank Whitson Fetter and Elizabeth Garrett Pollard. Her family supported chamber music at Swarthmore College.

Ellen went to school in Chexbres, Switzerland, at Ecole Préalpina. She also attended New Trier High School, graduating in 1957. After high school, she studied mathematics at Mount Holyoke College. She earned her degree in 1961.

Working with Edward Lorenz

In 1961, Ellen Fetter started working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She joined a team in the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Soon, she began working with Edward Lorenz, a famous scientist.

Ellen's job was to help Lorenz with his research. She used computers to do many calculations. She plotted how tiny particles moved in a special way. This work was very important. It helped create the idea of chaos theory. Chaos theory helps us understand complex systems, like weather patterns. Lorenz thanked Ellen in his famous paper for her help with the "many numerical computations."

Later Career and Family

In 1963, Ellen Fetter married John Gille. He was studying geophysics at MIT. They later moved to Florida State University. There, Ellen continued to work with computers for several years.

In the 1970s, Ellen and John moved to Colorado. John Gille became a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Ellen took computer science classes at the University of Colorado Boulder. She later worked in tax preparation.

Ellen's daughter, Sarah Gille, also became a scientist. Sarah studied physics at Yale University. Today, she works in oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. She studies the physics of the ocean.

See also

In Spanish: Ellen Fetter para niños