But it is also insufficient work, in the sense that the recovery of a name is not the same as the prevention of the original injustice.

We cannot give back to Mary Kenner the eighteen years she waited, or the commercial success she was denied, or the financial security that should have followed from her inventive work.

What we can do is ensure that the story is told accurately, completely, and with the seriousness it deserves.

We can ensure that the next generation of inventors — the young people who might see themselves in Mary Kenner’s story and find in it evidence that people like them have always been doing this work — have access to that story.

And we can continue to ask the question that her story makes unavoidable: how many other Mary Kenners are there?