Today is International Women in Mathematics day and Dora is being commemorated at the Women’s History Scotland blog. I’m so pleased to see her remarkable story getting some airtime, this time focusing on her Scottish connections and the mystery of why she chose to retire to a remote house at Loch Morar.
It’s beautiful in the West Highlands and Dora and her husband John loved fishing, but a house on the loch with no electricity or road access seems quite a challenge for a woman of 70. After a lifetime of building an international business, developing budgetary control, management planning and scientific analysis using machine calculation, perhaps she longed for peace. But the house had been used by the Special Operations Executive for training the Norwegian resistance. Did her secret work in WW2 connect her with someone who knew the house? Did John’s Norwegian colleague, Larsen, tell them about it?
Next week I am speaking about Dora at the Women’s History Association of Ireland’s conference. I’m focusing on her response to loss. She lost her father when she was 8 years old, and both her parents lost their fathers as young children too. These losses prompted her mother to ensure that Dora and her siblings had the best education she could afford, to cushion them from destitution.
Then when Dora lost her fiancé, Hugh Cass, at Gallipoli in 1915, it proved to be the formative crisis in her life. Her future as wife and mother evaporated and instead she used her mathematical skills and entrepreneurial spirit to build a career for herself. But her story is largely lost to history and I am also talking about this at the WHAI conference. Sadly, it is extremely common for women’s achievements to be overlooked or ignored, so I am sure I will have a sympathetic audience!
A Bitter Equation 