Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II

Profiles the remarkable naval career of four American women scientists in World War II--Mary Sears, Florence van Straten, Grace Hopper, and Mina Rees--and discusses their contribution to naval science in the area of computers, the use of weather in combat, oceanography, and applied mathematics. THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR Il, FOUR scientists left their comfortable college teaching positions to work for the govern- ment. Three served in uniform, the fourth oversaw contracts for the U.S. Navy. Such dramatic changes in lifestyle during the period were common—for men. But these established scientists were women, and each made significant contributions to a navy embroiled in a modern, science-dependent war: Mary Sears, a Woods Hole Oceano- graphic Institution planktonologist, headed the Hydrographic Office’s Oceanographic Unit; Grace Hopper, a Yale-trained mathe- matician, went to the Bureau of Ships Com- putation Laboratory at Harvard where she worked on one of the first computers churn- ing out essential data for ordnance and other projects; Florence van Straten, a New York University chemist, served as an aerological engineer analyzing the use of weather in combat, and Mina Rees was the chief technical Mathematics Panel aide to the Applied of the National Defense Research Committee. Deeply rooted in pre- viously unexamined primary sources, this work helps readers understand the personal and professional experiences of women in the military, the attitudes they faced, and the educational and occupational barriers placed before women scientists in the 1930s and 1940s. While focusing on ing the war, the author their efforts dur- also examines the women’s skills and training, tells how they came to war work, and details the con- tributions they made once there. Kathleen Broome Williams further considers how the war changed their lives, especially their professional lives, and how it affected their future careers. Other books have been writ- ten about women in the military, but this is the first to focus on women scientists in the navy.