Two Mathematicians Make Their Mark

Story by Monette A. Bailey
Portraits by John T. Consoli

Top: Ruth Davis Bottom: Tasha Inniss

The Pacesetter

Ruth Davis' life path began in high school; she refused to take typing. Most girls growing up in the 1940s were destined for clerical jobs and Davis wanted no part of that.

So years later when she approached IBM after earning her doctorate in mathematics from the University of Maryland in 1955, company administrators said Davis couldn’t be hired. Women only filled secretarial positions. Fortunately, this left her available for employment when the Navy’s Adm. Hyman Rickover came looking for people who knew computers. The pioneering officer, who developed the country’s first nuclear powered submarine, wanted a team who could make better machines.

"I would like to say that it was hard, as a woman, to get hired, but he was eccentric enough that it wasn’t,” says Davis. “He gathered six of us from around the country. He didn’t care if you were yellow, purple, green or had five arms.”

Tasha Inniss understands Davis' reluctance to play up her accomplishments as a woman. However, it is precisely her position as a black woman in mathematics that excites Inniss. An assistant professor of mathematics at Spelman College since last spring, she is one of the first three African American women to graduate from Maryland's mathematics department with doctoral degrees in 2000, along with Kimberly Weems and Sherry Scott Joseph.

Where Davis chose management after school, Inniss selected academia. Her passion for mathematics is clear when she talks about illuminating math's wonders for another generation, especially its females.

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