Celebrating Women in STEM: Ida Rhodes

pcmag.com:

March is designated as Women’s History Month, and this one has been overshadowed by so much that tugs more urgently at our attention, the war in Ukraine. But in this haze of news of a purported battle against Nazis that instead attempts to violently wrest control of a free nation from a Jewish leader, there is a reminder of a life that brought so much of this together.

Ida Rhodes was a Ukrainian Jewish woman mathematician at a time when those things were an exceedingly unlikely combination. Rhodes was born Hadassah Itzkowitz in a shtetl 50 miles outside Kyiv, not a place of opportunity but for a Russian countess who provided educational opportunities for some of the children. The countess was an amateur naturalist and took a particular interest in Rhodes. She would have her over as a guest, giving her kosher meals and taking her for trips through the countryside on which she passed on her knowledge of plants and animals.  

This supportive environment for Rhodes’s intellect was not enough to counter the pogroms the Jews endured and Rhodes and her parents moved to the United States when she was 13. This is where she became Ida.

Rhodes enrolled at Cornell in 1919 to study mathematics and had a stellar career there. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1922 and Phi Kappa Phi in 1923, and she received her BA in February 1923 and her MA in September of the same year. 

After earning her degrees, Rhodes did not immediately have opportunities to put them to use. She worked as a nurse during at least part of this time. There is scant information about the rest of this period of her life. It varies from a few details about a short marriage, possibly working as a high school math teacher, working in merchandise control at Macy’s,