That story is true, according to an obituary written by one of her other sons, USC Viterbi School of Engineering professor Neil Siegel, after Judith died at age 82 in 2016. And Neil shared more of Judith’s accomplishments in his tribute to his mom.

By the time she was 19, for example, Judith was a New York Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company dancer and an engineering student. She married Bernard Siegel after her freshman year and soon moved across the country with him. And in the ensuing 10 years, she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Southern California and welcomed her first three children: Neil, Howard, and Rachel. 

Judith divorced and remarried in the 1960s, tying the knot with fellow aerospace engineer, Tom Black, and the couple welcomed son Jack in 1969.

“When it was time to go to the hospital, she took with her a computer printout of the problem she was working on,” Neil wrote. “Later that day, she called her boss and told him that she had solved the problem. And … oh, yes, the baby was born, too.”