The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone

In the vein of “Hidden Figures”, Fagone tells the story of Elizebeth Friedman and her husband William, who together invented modern cryptology.  During Prohibition, Elizebeth used her talents to pursue rum smugglers.  During WWII, she tracked down covert Nazi spy rings in South America.  Elizebeth herself broke several versions of the German Enigma machine, while her husband broke the Japanese “Purple” code machine without ever laying eyes on one.

 

These two remarkable people were brought together by Elizebeth’s chance encounter with a librarian, right before she was going to leave Chicago and go back home to Indiana.  Instead, she ended up on the estate of a millionaire, searching for hidden messages in Shakespeare’s writings.  That began her journey, which ended with amazing advances in codebreaking strategies, and the beginnings of what would become the NSA. 

 

And who has ever heard of her, until this book?