The Moon landing reflects Cold War priorities

The machine was commissioned for artillery tables, connecting mathematical innovation with military power.

ENIAC required decomposition of equations, planning of data flow, testing and debugging before stored-program languages existed.

The lunar module reached the Moon after a mission dependent on trajectory design, numerical simulation, navigation and real-time calculation.

Johnson calculated and checked trajectories and helped design procedures for synchronizing spacecraft in lunar orbit.

Mainframes, onboard guidance, ground teams and hand-prepared backup charts formed one distributed calculating system.

Raised in Tehran, Mirzakhani became an influential geometer studying curved surfaces and dynamical systems.

Her work connected geometry, topology and dynamics in spaces whose points represent different shapes of Riemann surfaces.

Olympiad training and university study in Iran preceded her doctorate and research appointments in the United States.

Her birthday later became the date for an international celebration encouraging women's participation in the field.

A paper dated 24 July 2007 separates zero as absence, positional numeral and abstract mathematical object.