Ebook: 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.