Mary Ann Mansigh

Mary Ann Karlsen (née Mansigh) was a computer programmer active in the 1950s in the use of scientific computers.

She assisted Berni Alder and Tom Wainwright in the implementation of molecular dynamics in the mid twentieth century,  serving as assistant to Alder.

She is regarded as a pioneer in programming and computing, particularly computational science.

Initially long forgotten (except in a few interviews, annotations and oral transcripts), she has received increased attention in recent times. She has a lecture series named in her honour. However, from around the 2010s, her name has been increasingly introduced to students of computational science.

Karlsen attended the University of Minnesota, where she studied physics, chemistry and mathematics. In 1955 she took a position at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a software engineer.