The Mathematics Of What Might Have Been

There is a category of historical question that cannot be answered and that is nevertheless worth asking: what would have been different if the barriers Mary Ross faced had not existed?

It is not an answerable question.

Counterfactual history is always speculative.

But it is a useful question to hold in mind because it clarifies what the barriers actually cost — not just to Mary Ross personally, but to American aerospace and to American mathematics.

She entered aerospace engineering in 1942, at thirty-four, after spending more than a decade doing mathematical work that was below her capacity because the fields that matched her capacity were not open to her.