The Cellar - February 22nd, 2015: Elizebeth Friedman

For Dana... Elizebeth Friedman is often refered to as America's first female cryptanalyst.
Although it take a certain type of thinking to be really good at it, anybody can learn cryptography from a good teacher. So Ms Friedman must have been taught by a man. Wrong, code breath, she had been hired as an assistant to Elizabeth Wells Gallup and her sister Kate Wells. The wealthy and extremely well educated sisters were sure Francis Bacon was Shskespeare, and encoded messages were hidden in the works of both.
If you were poor, and thought weird stuff, you got be an extra in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. But if you were rich, you hire Sancho Panza... uh, Elizebeth Friedman, to gather everything the world knows about cryptanalysis and teach the art/science to yourself.

http://cellar.org/2015/Elizebeth-Friedman.jpg
I think she would fit right into an Indiana jones movie.

In 1923 Friedman went to work for the US Coast Guard then moved to the US Treasury Department’s Bureaus of Prohibition and of Customs. She made a splash decoding 12,000 messages by the Canadian rum-runner cartel controlling most of the smuggling. After the Coast Guard sank a ship called "I'm Alone", flying the Canadian flag, Canada sued us. But Ms Friedman convinced the court the messages she'd decoded proved the ship was really owned by Americans.

She also convinced Canada she knew her shit... so much so they asked for her help. After she became boss and teacher at a permanent cryptography group in the Coast Guard, In 1937 the Canadian government asked for her help in busting a huge opium ring. She did.

Her husband William, who was a pretty good cryptanalyst, (he'd learned from the best... yeah, she'd taught him), and Elizebeth, were instamental in breaking the Jap code PURPLE, and taking down the Jap spy Velvalee Dickinson.