David Kahn

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David Kahn (2006)

David Kahn (born February 7, 1930 in New York City ) is an American historian , journalist and writer . His specialty is the history of cryptology and military intelligence.

The Codebreakers

David Kahn (2010) with the NCM plaque of honor that was presented to him on the occasion of his 80th birthday

Kahn's first book was published in 1967 and was entitled "The Codebreakers - The Story of Secret Writing". It is regarded as the (English-language) standard work on the history of cryptography par excellence. The author describes in great detail the various cryptographic procedures from their beginnings in antiquity through the Middle Ages to the First World War and the Second World War . A few historical gaps remain, however, even in new editions, as the existence of the Colossus computers constructed during World War II was kept secret until 1970.

Life

David Kahn is the child of Jesse and Florence Kahn (actually Cohen ), who emigrated from Austria-Hungary to the USA in 1907. His interest in cryptography grew out of reading the book Secret and urgent by Fletcher Pratt . He then joined the American Cryptogram Association and later the New York Cipher Society . After his time at Bucknell University, Kahn worked as a reporter for Newsday. In 1960 he wrote an article in The New York Times about the exposure of defectors from the National Security Agency . The article got him a contract for his book.

Kahn later learned German and worked in the military archive in Freiburg im Breisgau . He wanted to research military reconnaissance during the Second World War. The book Hitler's Spies finally appeared in 1978. He used his results to write a dissertation. In 1974 he received his doctorate for this.

Today Kahn lives in Great Neck and has two sons. He plans further publications dealing with military reconnaissance during World War II.

Works

  • The Codebreakers , MacMillan 1967, 1974, abridged and supplemented in paperback edition Sphere Books 1980 and revised by B & T 1996 (approx. 1200 pages), ISBN 0-684-83130-9
  • Plaintext in the new unabridged: An examination of the definitions on cryptology in "Webster's Third New International Dictionary" (Crypto Press 1963)
  • Cryptology goes Public (Council on Foreign Relations 1979)
  • Notes & correspondence on the origin of polyalphabetic substitution (1980)
  • Codebreaking in World Wars I and II: The major successes and failures, their causes and their effects (Cambridge University Press 1980)
  • Kahn on Codes: Secrets of the New Cryptology (Macmillan 1984) ( ISBN 0-02-560640-9 )
  • Cryptology: Machines, History and Methods by Cipher Deavours and David Kahn (Artech House 1989) ( ISBN 0-89006-399-0 )
  • Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boats Codes, 1939-1943 (Houghton Mifflin 1991) ( ISBN 0-395-42739-8 )
  • Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (Da Capo Press 2000) ( ISBN 0-306-80949-4 )
  • The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking (Yale University Press 2004) ( ISBN 0-300-09846-4 )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kahn, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author of cryptographic literature
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City