The Cherokee Mathematician Who Helped Design America’s Space Age – While Much Of Her Work Remained Secret

In each of these cases, the women were doing the mathematical and scientific work.

They were doing it at the highest levels.

They were doing work that was essential to the achievements that got credited to the programs, the institutions, or the male colleagues who received public recognition.

And the mechanisms by which that work was made invisible — the job titles, the credit structures, the publication practices, the hiring policies — were institutional mechanisms, not accidents.

Mary Ross was working in a field and in an era when those institutional mechanisms were fully operational.