Ellen Fetter facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ellen Cole Fetter
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| Alma mater | New Trier High School Mount Holyoke College |
| Known for | Chaos theory |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Florida State University |
Ellen Cole Fetter Gille is an American computer scientist. She is known for her important work with Edward Norton Lorenz on chaos theory. Chaos theory helps us understand how small changes can lead to big, unpredictable differences in complex systems, like weather patterns.
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Her Early Life and Education
Ellen Fetter was born to Frank Whitson Fetter and Elizabeth Garrett Pollard. Her mother helped create a special fund for chamber music at Swarthmore College. This fund has been supported by her family for many years.
Ellen went to school in different places. She studied at the Ecole Préalpina in Chexbres, Switzerland. She also attended New Trier High School and graduated in 1957. After high school, she went to Mount Holyoke College to study mathematics, and she finished her degree in 1961.
Working with Computers and Chaos Theory
In 1961, Ellen Fetter started working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was recommended to Margaret Hamilton, another important computer scientist. When Hamilton moved to a new project, Ellen took over the computer work for Edward Lorenz.
Edward Lorenz was a meteorologist, a scientist who studies weather. He was trying to understand how weather patterns change. Ellen's job was to use computers to plot how a particle moved in a special experiment. This work became the very beginning of chaos theory. Lorenz thanked Ellen in his famous paper, saying she did "many numerical computations." This shows how important her work was to his discoveries.
Later Career and Family
In 1963, Ellen Fetter married John Gille. He was studying geophysics (the study of Earth's physical processes) at MIT. They later moved to Florida State University, where Ellen continued to work with computer programming for several years.
In the 1970s, Ellen and John moved to Colorado. John Gille is now a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Ellen took more computer science classes at the University of Colorado Boulder. Later, she decided to work in tax preparation.
Ellen Fetter's daughter, Sarah Gille, also became a scientist. She studied physics at Yale University. Today, Sarah works in oceanography (the study of oceans) at the University of California, San Diego.
See also
