Pioneer of federally funded computer research and development and the first woman president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Rees transformed the landscape of postwar American science.
She was valedictorian at Hunter College High School in New York City. She graduated Summa cum Laude with a math major at Hunter College in 1923. She received a master's in mathematics from Columbia University in 1925. At that time she was told unofficially that "the Columbia mathematics department was not really interested in having women candidates for Ph.D's."
She started teaching at Hunter High School, then took a sabbatical to study for the doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1929. Rees earned her doctorate in 1931 with a thesis on "Division algebras associated with an equation whose group has four generators," published in the American Journal of Mathematics, Vol. 54 (Jan. 1932), 51–65. Her advisor was Leonard Dickson.
In 1983 Rees was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences "for her contributions to the scientific enterprise, especially in mathematics, astronomy, and computer sciences, from wartime, through the transition from war to peace, and continuing today."
