LTE: North Country's latest superstar

To the editor: In Clinton County, we do pride ourselves with our background as many are hard-working and intelligent contributors to our society. I feel as though our Peru native, Frances E. Allen should be remembered with much greater pride, if not being the most important native citizen who has ever lived among us. Frances E Allen was born and grew up in Peru, on a farm and learned how to work both physically and mentally hard on the farm and while attending our public school. Working with her parents and younger brothers on the farm, being operated as a working dairy and crop farm while she grew to adulthood. Why is she so important, you may ask? She was a mathematician and grasped the concept of needing a machine that could operate multiprocessing systems in order to accomplish complicated calculations. She was responsible for bringing the IBM computer capabilities to the level which the whole world now uses; allowed NASA to control launch and land manned spacecraft; she developed a number of amazing feats but for me, the Fortran computer-based language and the language is still being used by the scientist and engineers throughout the world today. Her contribution was so great, the world named an important part of the largest proton collider Cern, built in Europe, called the Large Hadron Collider after her. She should be recognized with those who achieved "earth rattling" discoveries, such as Madame Currie, Alexander Graham Bell, Tesla and Edison. She lived from 8-4-32 to 8-4-2020 and some of her brothers are still alive in Peru, N.Y. Talk about your hometown hero. She is mine! I took Fortran computer science in college and hadn't a clue she was a main player as, if not, the creator. She certainly is the "cream of the crop!" —Donald LaPierre, Mooers Forks, New York

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LTE: North Country's latest superstar

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