In 1938, she completed graduate study in mathematics at Colorado State University — or, by some accounts, continued study there — adding to the academic credentials she had already built.

The graduate-level mathematics she was accumulating was more than what most classroom teachers pursued.

It reflected an ambition that the teaching jobs could not entirely contain.

What she needed was a context where mathematics at that level was required, valued, and connected to problems of real consequence.

The war was about to provide that context in a way that would have been impossible to predict.

The War Changed The Equation