Archives of Women in Science and Engineering
Special Collections Department - Archives of Women in Science and Engineering - Oral History Project
MS 379: Oral History Collection
Bryant Mather
Interview transcript, 1997
Interview portion:
TZB: Her father, since her father was an engineer, did that influence her in any way?
BM: All right, let me comment on that. Because he was an engineer, he was much more devoted to the notion
of being able to do things mathematically than would otherwise have been
the case. Kay used to bitch, mildly and infrequently, but nevertheless, about
the whole Christmas vacation she spent once, I think when she was at Bryn
Mawr, where what she got for Christmas was a fourteen inch slide rule and
her father spent the whole Christmas vacation making sure she understood in excruciating detail all the possible
things you could ever do with the mother.
When—I think maybe it was the year she got out of Bryn Mawr, he sent her
to summer school at Cornell to take some more mathematics. She had programmable computers before other people did—many other
people. She
liked mathematics.