English

Fermi, Pasta, Ulam and a mysterious lady

History and Philosophy of Physics 2008-01-11 v1 Statistical Mechanics Chaotic Dynamics Pattern Formation and Solitons Exactly Solvable and Integrable Systems

Abstract

It is reported that the numerical simulations of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem were performed by a young lady, Mary Tsingou. After 50 years of omission, it is time for a proper recognition of her decisive contribution to the first ever numerical experiment, central in the solitons and chaos theories, but also one of the very first out-of-equilibrium statistical mechanics study. Let us quote from now on the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou problem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0801.1590,
  title  = {Fermi, Pasta, Ulam and a mysterious lady},
  author = {Thierry Dauxois},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.1590},
  year   = {2008}
}