Naomi Livesay

Naomi Livesay (19162001) was an American mathematician who contributed to the Manhattan Project. She received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Cornell College in Iowa and went on to receive a Ph.M. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1939. Livesay worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos from 1944-1946 where she was assigned to calculate the predicted shockwave propulsion from an implosion type bomb.

Early life and education Naomi Mary Livesay was born in northern Montana in 1916. She earned her B.A. in mathematics from Cornell College in Iowa and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Afterwards, she went on to the University of Wisconsin where she was a research assistant in the education department. Due to discrimination against women at the school, she was prevented from pursuing her Ph.D. Instead she earned her Ph.M. in mathematics in 1939.

Career Upon receiving her Ph.M. in mathematics, Livesay worked at Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs where she worked for Princeton Surveys, calculating statistics regarding the costs of state and local governments. She had an assistant and designed plug-board programs for the device for six months. Livesay then received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to study education at the University of Chicago. She worked with Bruno Bettelheim and George Sheviakov on a psychology project. Livesay held a supervisor role on Feynman's team where she oversaw a crew that ran IBM machines 24 hours a day. She also performed hand calculations to check the work of the IBM machine.

Alongside Stan Frankel and Eldred Nelson, Livesay developed a program for the PCAMs to solve the set of hydrodynamic equations for implosions in February and March of 1944. She later served as supervisor of the PCAM operators. did not sufficiently offset expense of child care and she abandoned her mathematics career. Beginning in 1956, she taught for a year as an assistant professor of science at Columbia College in South Carolina.

Personal life While working at Los Alamos, Livesay met experimental nuclear physicist Anthony French. They married in October 1945 and had two children.