You're more likely to know their name because of the recent efforts to highlight their work an contributions BECAUSE they were ignored for so long.
But it was a pretty huge team effort and you will never know of that boring white middle age man who did equally as important engineering or mathematical work.
There is not necessarily wrong with it but it is pretty funny when I think about famous programmers my mind goes to Ada Lovelace, Margret Hamilton, Grace Hopper, Denis Ritchie and Linus Torvalds.
All great programmers and I know others exists but those are the ones I think I hear the most about I think.
Precisely! They have not gone unrecognized unlike the hundreds of thousands of other NASA ground staff.
> they were ignored for so long.
They never were ignored. They have recently been elevated above all the other NASA ground staff.