A number of the research department’s mathematical staff were female. Like everybody else, the Navy was eager to locate women capable of doing higher math—the very field that women long had been discouraged from entering—and the Naval Annex put out the word to boot-camp evaluators, asking them to be on the lookout for enlisted women who scored high on the math aptitude test. These women had not enjoyed anything like the same educational opportunities the men had, nor the chance to embark on distinguished careers as engineers and academic mathematicians. They did, however, have the aptitude,
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