As mistercow says, it would have been a good idea to explain that. That detail just hanging there with no explanation caused me to pause as well, because I've encountered some mathematicians (not people I've worked with, just visiting professors and such) that felt the need to tell stories about person X, who was in some way not as clueful as they'd expected, "and by the way she was a woman."

I'm not in any way suggesting that the article author (Devlin) is like that, just that I would personally try not to make a statement like that without proactively making it clear that I'm not "that guy."