Mary, queen of maths

    Freeman Dyson claims that Littlewood did not understand 
    the importance of the work that he and Cartwright had 
    done: "Only Cartwright understood the importance of her 
    work as the foundation of chaos theory, and she is not a 
    person who likes to blow her own trumpet."

    He records, however, that shortly before her death, he 
    received an indignant letter from Cartwright, scolding 
    him for crediting her with more than she deserved.

I don't quite remember the last time an academic did that. On the contrary, I have personally observed quite the opposite. Glad to know there were (or are) people who uphold ethical and moral values.

Ed Lorenz didn't blow his own trumpet either. He used to give demonstrations on elementary chaos for kids in my town. Using an old fashioned pin ball machine. The man led a very solitary existence. We even ran into him on one of the mountains around our town shortly before he died. He stayed very active into his old age, but kept to himself. I remember wonder how he was seeing the world around him even though we were both on the same trail.

Modesty wins, proves that we are in debt of millions of unrecognized humans for the immense knowledge we have gathered n use everyday.

Great read, I didn't know chaos theory had applications to radar; I thought the study of radar originated in probability theory and spectral theory. Very interesting.

My only criticism is that Mary Cartwright would probably balk at the idea of royalty in mathematics.