... a place that changed hands many times due to wars, invasions and treaties. If I had been born earlier, perhaps I would be Lithuanian or Russian, if I were born there today I would be Belarusian, but I am legally Argentine by adoption and by choice.

I met Manuel Sadosky and I told him about my frustrated love for mathematics. He told me that he offered some courses at the Faculty of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences. I preferred, however, to enrol on a regular basis and take the full degree, and I obtained my Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics, in 1960, working at the same time in the Faculty as a teaching assistant.

After issuing an international bid that year [1957], all members of a special commission from the University of Buenos Aires selected the Ferranti Mercury computer to be purchased for the University.... The installation of the Mercury was completed by the beginning of 1961. The reason for such delay was that the chosen room to place the computer, being prepared on the second floor of the new building of the School of Exact and Natural Sciences, was not yet ready and did not suit the required strict Ferranti specifications. The members of the staff appointed to work with our Mercury were to be trained in Manchester, at the Ferranti plant. This was one of the factors that favoured the choice for the Mercury computer. Actually, that training began in Buenos Aires; our teacher was Cicely Popplewell, who had been one of Alan Turing's assistants. Ernesto Garcia Camarero, a Spanish mathematician engaged by the University for the training of future computer users, also participated in the formation of the analysts and programmers of the Institute.

By the time Mercury arrived and the operations began, I had the luck to have in hand a real problem of Physics that Mercury solved as soon as it was installed. In one of her first mornings in Buenos Aires, Cicely Popplewell gave me a private lesson in which I got instructed on the programming needs of a problem to which I had devoted several months of Nestler Rule calculation without reaching the solution. That afternoon, the problem got solved.

I became acquainted with a very powerful new method of calculating the eigenvalues of a general matrix, the Francis method, which I studied, programmed and wrote the specifications of, under the guidance of the Unit staff. The program that calculated the eigenvalues of a general matrix up to the order 15 × 15 was successfully applied. The second problem, a library routine on which I was working, was also finished and became the third library routine for the Mercury in the Unit.

In view of the equipment they had, a short period of my stay in Saclay was devoted to learn and practice FORTRAN, the high-level language that had been in use in the computing world since 1959 and was useful to programme the IBM machines in use in the Centre.

She was nervous at first, until she got over it, but later it turned out that she was very clear.

Juan Carlos Fränkel, Marcelo Larramendy and Néstor Sameguini were students of mathematics at that time. Cecilia, in addition to being a teacher, worked with Clementina at the Computational Institute. Over time, the three students also joined the Computational Institute, and became colleagues and friends of Berdichevsky. The days were long. At the end of the day, the three of them and Cecilia would go to some pub chosen by Juan Carlos, the expert on the subject. Some spouses of the married couples also came, Olga, Betty and, from time to time, Mario the doctor. But there were times when the work went on until late at night and the pub trip was cancelled, to the despair of Juan Carlos. Sometimes the "industrious little ant," as Betty calls her, would go over a few revolutions. Like that of the Census that was processed once at the Institute, involving endless work. That day Cecilia did not return to her house until her doctor husband showed up unexpectedly. He pulled her away. "Take a good look at her," he told everyone, who had never seen him so angry, "because today is Cecilia's last day at the Institute. She is finished, you will never see her around here again." The next day Cecilia reappeared punctually, as she did every day, to continue working hard on the Census issue.

Not only personalities like Manuel Sadosky went into exile - in 1974 - but, complete teams with their staff and equipment, went to enrich the science of other countries. For family reasons, I stayed in the country and began a management and consulting career.

The entire hospital joined hundreds of people from Avellaneda to cry loudly the day he died on 1 July 1990. Manuel Sadosky remembers the scene with all the nurses and doctors lined up on the steps of the hospital, an unforgettable ceremony. Belgrano Avenue was blocked by the people who came to pay their last respects to the great neighbourhood doctor, without caring about the cold or the rain. Juan Carlos Fränkel tells me that even the sick got up to go and join the crowd in the final farewell.

"Cecilia is vital, tireless," says Juan Carlos Fränkel. "Cecilia is very enterprising," says Marcelo Larramendy, "once she gets something in her head, she doesn't stop. While at the Caja, she was convinced of the benefits of the Chip Card. She was a pioneer of the subject in Argentina." For Marcelo Larramendy, the chip card was something like a solution waiting for a problem, but the ideal problem never appeared. For Ruti, her niece, Cecilia was ahead of her time. She saw the issue ten years too early. "Cecilia is my aunt," says Julieta Burzomi, as if that phrase said it all. "She is fun, enterprising, cheerful. She is actually much more than an aunt."

I also spoke with Olga, her lifelong employee. "I have been working with her for 43 years. I am very proud." She also says that Cecilia is very cheerful. I asked her about her trips to Europe. "Oh yeah. I will never forget that first trip, it was a gift for me, I went crazy. First we went to Paris, 11 days there. Then London, 4 days, Manchester 3 days. Then Spain, 10 days in Barcelona, 4 in Madrid. From there to Italy, Rome, Venice, Milan. It was 45 days. We visited the museums, the churches, we did all the excursions. When I came back I spent a whole year thinking about the days I had lived with her. Later we went other times, but that first trip was something incredible. She is that generous!"