Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II / Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy

Improbable Warriors: Women Scientists and the U.S. Navy in World War II. By Kathleen Broome Williams. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001. ISBN 1-55750-961-1. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvii, 280. $34.95.

Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy. By Sarah Godson. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2002. ISBN 1-55750-317-6. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xvi, 453. $38.95.

Kathleen Broome Williams fills a neglected niche in military historiography with Improbable Warriors, a nicely written history of four female professors who served the U.S. Navy during World War II.

An associate professor at Bronx Community College, CUNY, Williams focuses on Mary Sears, who wrote intelligence reports for amphibious assaults in the Pacific; Grace Hopper, who worked on the famous Mark I computer and helped lay the early foundations of computer science; Florence van Straten, an aeronautical engineer who helped develop the new science of meteorology; and Mina Rees, whose oversight of multi-million dollar contracts for naval science projects foreshadowed the close relationship between the government and scientific research after the war. The first three served in the Navy's WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service), and all four had Ph.D.s and taught at universities prior to...