The Mother of Cryptology

The modern mother of cryptology is a woman whose achievements were lost in time due to others claiming responsibility for what she did. 

 Elizebeth Smith Friedman is a woman whose name is not one that immediately pops to mind when discussing cryptography or mathematics.  In reality, her husband is much more well known since he helped found the NSA.

Elizebeth was born in 1892, the youngest of 9 children.  Although she received her degree in English lit with strong studies in Latin, Greek, and German, she ended up applying for a library job that resulted in being hired at a private think tank in the late nineteen teens.

At this point in the, this facility had the only national cryptologic laboratory devoted to trying to prove Sir Frances Bacon actually wrote all of Shakespeare's work.  It was here that she met and married William Friedman, her husband and partner.  After a few years, they moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the government.

Although a poet and not a mathematician, she taught herself how to decode secret messages without knowing the key.  Her mind was incredible to crack codes, finding keys, and creating methods that changed the world of cryptography. Furthermore, she helped invent cryptology or  the modern science of secret writing.

One of her first jobs for the Navy and Coast Guard had her breaking codes used by rum runners or those who illegally transported alcohol and other goods during prohibition.  She helped capture criminals and testified at numerous trials which resulted in convictions because she easily explained how she cracked the codes to juries. During this time, she cracked over 20,000 messages whether simple code, transposition, or something more complex.

In 1937, she helped the Canadian government convict an opium dealer by cracking the code based on Mandarin Chinese without knowing the language. Just a few years later, she and her team of code breakers began intercepting messages that were quite similar to the prohibition type messages but were sent by Nazi spies.

Just before World War II, she transferred to the Coordination of Information where she
focused on cracking certain Enigma codes, specifically those based in South America, so messages could be intercepted.  She shared the codes with the FBI, giving them the ability to intercept and translate messages resulting in the South American spy network being shut down.  J. Edger Hoover claimed the FBI did all this on their own and ensured no one knew she had anything to do with it by creating a propaganda film.

She also discovered the letters written by Velvalee Dickinson contained coded information about the moves of ships at Pearl Harbor.  Her work was responsible for Velvalee's conviction in 1944 as a Japanese spy.  Five of her letters were sent to Elizebeth because the letters with their talk about dolls in her doll collection seemed strange.  Velvalee did own a doll shop in New York City where some of the dolls sold for as much as $750 each but upon investigation, it was noted that she had fallen into debt upon her husband's death.  Investigators discovered her ties to the Japanese consulate and the Japanese American Society which was enough to arrest and try her.

Although she had no direct link to beginning the National Security Agency,  she helped create the science underlying their work. It was her husband who helped found it with the Army code breaking unit he founded in the 1930's that was later absorbed into the NSA.

If you are interested in her story, check out the book "The Woman Who Smashed Codes" by Jason Fagone.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.