Corliss (is adopted)

As evidenced by her name, someone in her lineage had invented the steam engine that supplied power for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.   For Corliss, steam was just the nuisance that caused her hair to curl, but she loved numbers and calculations as much as that long-ago ancestor.   She funded her college years doing statistical analysis for the university, eventually obtaining a doctorate in bio-statistics and a job researching survivability in snake bite victims. Luckily, that did not require that she handle (or even see) snakes, as a childhood encounter left her with a deathly fear of anything slithery.

PJH 2016