Marjorie Devaney

Marjorie Ann "Marge" Jones Devaney (March 3, 1931 – September 20, 2007) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and computer scientist who assisted in the development of the MANIAC I (Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator And Computer) computer in 1951 as a member of the Theoretical Division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, making her one of world's earliest computer programmers.^[1][2][3]

Marjorie Devaney
Devaney punching a program for the MANIAC, 1952
Born	Marjorie Ann Jones (1931-03-03)March 3, 1931 Bell, California, USA
Died	September 20, 2007(2007-09-20) (aged 76) Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Resting place	Guaje Pines Cemetery, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
Alma mater	University of New Mexico–Los Alamos
Spouse	Joseph Devaney

Life and education

Marjorie Jones was the child of farmers from Wisconsin who lost their money and possessions in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Soon after, her family relocated to California where her father had a job arranged as a gravestone manufacturer. She was born in Bell, California^[3] in March 1931, making her the youngest of three children (one brother and one sister). At age four, her family moved to Pomona, California where Jones spent her childhood years and graduated high school. She started her college education at the University of Denver in September 1948, and graduated in August 1951 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. In the early 1970s, she began post-graduate studies at the University of New Mexico–Los Alamos (UNMLA). She completed graduate school with a master's degree in computer science and electrical engineering.^[1] Jones married Joseph James Devaney,^[3] and together they had one daughter.^[1] Devaney died in Los Alamos, New Mexico on September 20, 2007, and left behind her husband whose death occurred three days later.^[3][4]

Career

Marjorie Devaney began her career on October 8, 1951 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. She joined the MANIAC I program as a member of the Theoretical Division under the leadership of Nicholas Metropolis and Jack Johnson. The Theoretical Division eventually became the Computing Division, where she worked for forty years. She retired in 1991 having made a number of contributions to the MANIAC I and MANIAC II programs. Her most notable work includes the co-creation of a central file system (CFS) used at the laboratory in Los Alamos, a task which took more than a decade to complete. Devaney wrote and co-wrote several publications primarily related to mathematics and programming.^[1][2][3][5] Additionally, Devaney's work is referenced in numerous, independent publications.^[6][7][8][9]

Publications

• Devaney, Marjorie, and Jeanne Hudgins. "The Terminal Control Language for the Madcap Programming Language." ACM SIGPLAN Notices 7, no. 10 (1972): 130–36.
• Richtmyer, R., Devaney, M., and Metropolis, N. "Continued Fraction Expansions of Algebraic Numbers." Numerische Mathematik 4, no. 1 (1962): 68–84.
• Devaney, Joseph J., Leona O. Bordwell, and Marjorie J. Devaney. Hafnium Cross Sections and Their Temperature Dependence. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory of the University of California, 1962.
• Bordwell, Lee, Joseph J. Devaney, Marjorie Devaney, Bertha Fagan, and Max Goldstein. TEWA: An IBM Code for Computing the Maxwellian Doppler Broadening of Breit-Wigner Resonances. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory of the University of California, 1964.

References

1. "Oral-History:Marjorie "Marge" Devaney - Engineering and Technology History Wiki". ethw.org. Retrieved July 9, 2019.
2. Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, for the U. S. Department of. "A short history of women at Los Alamos". www.lanl.gov. Retrieved July 10, 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
3. "Marjorie Ann "Marge" Jones Devaney". Find A Grave. Retrieved July 10, 2019.
4. "Joseph James "Joe" Devaney". Find a Grave. Retrieved July 22, 2019.
5. Collins, M. W.; Devaney, M. J.; Willbanks, E. W. (January 1, 1983). "Network file-storage system". OSTI 5618873. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
6. Tatnall, Arthur; Leslie, Christopher (November 30, 2016). International communities of invention and innovation : IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference on the History of Computing, HC 2016, Brooklyn, NY, USA, May 25-29, 2016, revised selected papers. Tatnall, Arthur,, Leslie, Christopher. Cham, Switzerland. ISBN 9783319494630. OCLC 967705759.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
7. Algorithmic number theory : second internati[o]nal symposium, ANTS-II, Talence, France, May 18-23, 1996 : proceedings. Cohen, Henri., ANTS (Symposium : Algorithmic number theory) (2nd : 1996 : Talence, France). Berlin: Springer. 1996. ISBN 3540615814. OCLC 35172542.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
8. Processes controlling the composition of clastic sediments. Johnsson, Mark J., Basu, Abhijit. Boulder, Colo.: Geological Society of America. 1993. ISBN 0813722845. OCLC 28546985.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
9. Digest of papers : emerging solutions for data-intensive applications. Friedman, Karen., IEEE Computer Society. Washington, D.C.: IEEE Computer Society Press. 1987. ISBN 0818607726. OCLC 16402702.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

Further reading

• Wells, Mark B. (May 1978). "III. MANIAC". Computing at LASL in the 1940s and 1950s (Report). Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. pp. 16–21. LA-6943-H.