Prewar Distribution

In 1940, according to an American Council on Education study, there were 695 living recipients of Ph. D. degrees in mathematics conferred in the preceding decade. Of the 647 who reported their occupation, 85 percent were teaching, and an additional 4 percent combined teaching and research. Less than 6 percent were engaged solely in research, and no other single type of work claimed as much as 2 percent of the group (6).

The exact number of mathematics teachers before the war is not known. But the first Roster count in December 1942 revealed that there were 3,483 mathematics teachers in institutions of higher learning; and 686, nearly one-fifth, of these were women (14). Mathematics was taught in some 28,000 high schools in the country (7). In many of these, there was only one mathematics teacher, who also taught one or more other subjects; in others, there were several fulltime mathematics teachers on the faculty, sometimes as many as 25

or even more.

The relatively small number of mathematicians in industrial research before the war is indicated by Thornton C. Fry's estimate that in 1940 there were about 150 mathematicians doing consultative work on mathematical problems in industry (4). The largest prewar demand for women trained in mathematics was reported consistently by college placement bureaus to be in teaching or as statistical clerks in insurance or other business firms. Mathematics majors with special training in mathematical statistics or such applied courses as mathematics of finance, for example, were especially in demand. A few women, however, were employed even before the war in calculating or computing jobs with firms manufacturing such products as instruments and electrical equipment.

Some of this work was only arithmetical, and some women saw little difference, except in location, between their work as computers in an engineering department and that of cost clerks or calculating machine operators in the office. Several employers reported that they hired college mathematics majors not because of the need for higher mathematics on the job but because such training indicated accuracy and a liking for computing. However, even before the war, there were some exceptional women who were doing responsible mathematical work in industry. For example, one woman with a Ph. D. in mathematics from a large women's college has been engaged in research in the mathematical research department of a utility company for about 15 years. Although such cases are unusual, they indicate that opportunities do exist for the woman with ability.

In 1938, only 85 women mathematicians and statisticians were employed by the Federal Government (16). The Civil Service Commission reported that the demand for women mathematicians before the war was never great.

Annual Addition to the Supply

A small but steadily increasing number of persons took doctorates in mathematics before the war, and in 1940, 103 persons obtained Ph. D.'s in mathematics, the largest number in any one year up to that time (5). In the relatively new field of mathematical statistics, only 5 or 6 doctor's degrees were awarded annually before the war, according to recent estimates (10).

No figures are available on the number of persons receiving first degrees in mathematics in 1940. But the United States Office of Education reports the combined number of graduates with majors in mathematics and in physical science in 1941-42 as 3,053, of whom onethird were women (19). In the same year, almost 1,000 people prepared to teach mathematics were graduated from colleges and universities, and about 45 percent of these graduates were women (19). For the most part, their degrees were from schools of education.

Wartime Changes

During the war there was a tremendous increase in the demand for women trained in mathematics in industry, in Government, and in research institutions working on Government projects. One women's college reported that every mathematics major had her choice of 25 jobs in industry or Government, and that the demand was overwhelming in research work. A coeducational university, which before the war had few outlets for mathematics majors except in routine calculating jobs, found many attractive jobs available to mathematics majors during the war, mostly in Government-sponsored research. This same story was repeated in a number of college placement bureaus throughout the country. There was a definite shift from the usual type of employment for mathematics majors in teaching and in clerical jobs in business firms to computing work in industry and on Government war projects.

Of 81 industrial firms visited by Bureau representatives near the end of the war or after its close, only 15, less than one-fifth, had employed college women in mathematical occupations during the war either in the research laboratory or in the plant, usually in the engineering department. Among them were gas and electric power companies, and manufacturers of transportation equipment, communications and

other electrical equipment, instruments, metal and metal products. The foods, paper products, and chemical industries were also represented, but the principal employment of women mathematical aids or assistants, computers, and calculators (as they were variously called), like that of engineering aids, was found in the industries in which engineering and physical problems rather than chemical problems were paramount. None were found in the 18 commercial laboratories visited.

Since their work consisted primarily of assisting engineers or research personnel with calculations or of performing inspecting or checking operations involving computations, their duties varied from purely routine arithmetical work to the solution of difficult problems requiring the use of calculus and other forms of higher mathematics. Graph and chart making was sometimes involved. In an aircraft plant, for example, beginning "computers" read blueprints and made weight calculations on simple parts, using slide rules and calculating machines. More experienced computers employed in the same plant. were working under the supervision of test engineers and assisted them by working out solutions of differential and integral equations, by plotting test data, and by preparing data sheets and charts. The only industrial establishment visited in which women were called mathematicians was another aircraft plant. The requisite training was 2 years of advanced college mathematics, or, for "senior" mathematicians, 4 years of training and experience. More routine work was done by technical computers, who were required to have at least 1 year of college mathematics.

On Government-sponsored projects farmed out to university and other private research laboratories during the war, like those carried on at the Radiation Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Manhattan project work at the University of Chicago, women mathematicians, especially those who combined physics with their mathematical training, were employed in relatively small numbers, along with a larger number of computers with only the bachelor's degree. Because such demand was virtually nonexistent before the war, it made a sizable impression. Some women transferred from college teaching to this type of work during the war period.

The women's military services, especially the WAVES, in the early expanding phase of their programs, were particularly eager to recruit college graduates with training in mathematics and science. Approximately 1,500 college graduates, most of them with mathematics or science majors, became WAVES officers who were trained for technical work in communications, air navigation, and aerology, often by other WAVES, whose earlier scientific training and teaching experience had resulted in their selection for such work.

A large group of the women became aerological officers and were engaged in meteorological work. (See Bull. 223-7, on Meteorology.) Others were assigned to such jobs as instruction in air navigation and work in ordnance. One woman supervised naval personnel assigned to a ballistics laboratory; another worked on computations of ballistic range tables and bomb tables, making computations from penetration charts and of various problems of exterior ballistics. A few others were assigned to survey work in radio, radar, and electronics, checking specifications and obtaining information from radio companies for complete identification of radio parts.

Mathematician, computer, geodetic computer, and cryptographer were among the job titles of a small group of WAC personnel who had the needed mathematical background for such work. Those who had some statistical training worked as statistical clerks, financial clerks, and financial technical clerks (23).

In the Federal Civil Service, women trained in mathematics were sought for many jobs, beginning at the junior professional level, which required only the bachelor's degree with a major in mathematics. They were employed not only in the War Department (Ordnance, Signal Corps, Engineer Corps) and in the Navy Department, including the Naval Research Laboratory, but also in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (as cryptographers), the National Bureau of Standards, and the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Special courses in mathematics were given in the Engineer Corps, Ordnance, and the Signal Corps, all in the War Department, to train needed personnel (22).

In Government, as in industry, the work varied from simple calculations to more complex assignments. Much of it was routine, but, as one research man long in Government service puts it, most mathematical work, no matter the degree of difficulty, involves routine. However, the difference between the mathematician and the routine computer, according to a well-known woman mathematician, "is precisely in handling the nonroutine aspects of the problem * * *. The distinctive contribution of the mathematician is either in clarifying the structure of a problem which has confused the engineer or physical scientist, and formulating it in mathematical language; or in creating a new mathematical theory, or extending a branch of an old one."

The increased Government and industrial demand, plus the drafting of men into military service, resulted in shortages of qualified teachEarly in the war, on the basis of reports from 1,060 colleges and universities in the fall of 1942, the United States Office of Education stated that mathematics was one of the subject fields in which there

ers.

772326°-48- -3

was a great number of vacancies, 57, on these college and university faculties (17).

The demand for statisticians and statistical clerks increased tremendously during the war. In 1944, the American Statistical Association had requests for more statisticians than it could supply, at salaries of $2,000 to $6,000 annually (12). College placement bureaus reported that women mathematics majors had their choice of a wide variety of jobs as statistical clerks or computers. The War and Navy Departments, medical centers, public health departments and agencies and other medical groups, as well as insurance companies, and at least one Federal Reserve bank were among the employers of recently trained statisticians.

A study of the employment of the members of the American Statistical Association in 1945 showed that the largest proportion of them, nearly two-fifths, were in Government, most of them in the Federal Government. Almost one-fifth were in colleges and universities, and another one-fifth were in manufacturing industries and financial institutions. About half of the members lived in two areas, the Washington, D. C., area and New York State, chiefly New York City. There was an approximately equal number in each of these areas (8). In the Institute of Mathematical Statistics the proportion of members in academic positions was much higher; more than one-half of them were so employed (10).

The lack of teaching personnel made it necessary for some schools to curtail their course offerings in mathematics. This was especially serious for those who wanted to go on with advanced training, but who found that only standard mathematics courses were being offered (3).

The number of doctorates awarded in mathematics, never large, declined sharply during the war as prospective students were withdrawn into military service. More than 100 were earned in 1940; only 41 in 1944 (5). The number of persons receiving first degrees in mathematics and science also declined from 3,053 in 1941-42 to 2,709 in 1943-44. The number of women in the group, however, increased from 1,012 to 1,141 (19).

Under the special Engineering, Science, and Management War Training programs, a number of women were given special training in mathematics to equip them for war jobs in industry and Government, according to the United States Office of Education. Among these courses were: engineering mathematics and calculus, as well as such specialized applied courses as mathematics for aircraft workers, for high-school teachers, for engineering aids (18). In addition, approximately 3,500 production and inspection engineers and other industrial personnel, from over 800 of the larger industrial corpora