Elizebeth Friedman

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Elizebeth Friedman

Elizebeth Smith Friedman (born  August 26, 1892 in Huntington , Indiana , †  October 31, 1980 in Plainfield , New Jersey ) was an American cryptanalyst .

Life

Education

Elizebeth Smith in 1892 as the youngest of nine children of her parents John M. Smith, a banker and politician of the religious community of Quakers belonged, and Sopha Strock Smith, in the US state born in the town of Indiana Huntington. Her mother had given her the somewhat unusual first name Elizebeth, as opposed to the usual spelling Elizabeth , to prevent her daughter from ever being called Eliza . After initially attending the College of Wooster in Ohio , Elizebeth earned her degree in English from Hillsdale College in Michigan . She was particularly interested in English literature, especially the works of Shakespeare . This versatile young woman also studied foreign languages ​​such as Latin , Greek and German .

Riverbank Laboratory

The Newberry Library in Chicago was Elizebeth's first place of work

After Miss Smith left college, she found her first job at the Newberry Research Library , a library in Chicago known not least for an original of Shakespeare's folio . From there she was poached in 1916 by the wealthy textile merchant George Fabyan (1867-1936) (see photo under web links ), who brought her to the American city of Geneva , which is not far from Chicago, also in Illinois , where he runs a private research facility called Riverbank . Financed by Fabyan, lived and worked in his think tank (Engl .: Think tank ) a good dozen researchers that deal with very different topics from the fields of natural sciences and sciences engineering and the humanities involved. This included areas of work such as acoustics , chemistry , genetics , and - what was new at the time - the scientific study of cryptology .

Fabyan gave Elizebeth Smith the task of looking for secret messages he suspected of being encrypted in Shakespeare's works in order to clarify an assumed foreign authorship . Instead of Shakespeare himself, the Lord Chancellor of Queen Elizabeth I , Sir Francis Bacon, should be the possible author , according to Fabyan .

Elizebeth's husband, William

In preparing the Elizabethan texts in question, a young colleague from the genetics laboratory named William Friedman helped her to enlarge and examine cryptic parts of the old documents. The two young researchers not only harmonized particularly well professionally, but also became closer privately and finally married in May 1917. Miss Smith became Mrs. Elizebeth Friedman.

Apart from Williams' one year absence due to the war , during which he trained American officers in cryptology, the newly wed couple worked in the Riverbank laboratories for four more years. After an argument with Fabyan, they moved to the US capital Washington in 1921 to work as a cryptanalyst for the US Department of War .

Time of prohibition

A little later, during the time of Prohibition , Elizebeth switched to the US Coast Guard , whose tasks included preventing the then illegal alcohol smuggling from ships across the sea. The smugglers communicated with the help of the then newly emerged radio technology and encrypted their radio messages in order to keep their communication secret. In addition to relatively simple substitution and transposition processes, they also used more complicated codes . As head of the United States Coast Guard Unit 387 (USCG Unit 387) , Elizebeth Friedman succeeded in deciphering a large number (more than 12,000) of these messages , and so crucial in exposing the illegal smuggling operations and convicting the perpetrators and even entire contraband rings like the one Consolidated Exporters Company .

After prohibition was abolished in 1933, Elizebeth Friedman worked as a cryptanalyst for the US Treasury and appeared on several occasions as an expert witness in important court cases . During World War II, she worked for various cryptanalysis services in the United States Army and Navy . After the Second World War, she also worked as a consultant for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for which she developed a secure cryptosystem based on the One Time Pad (one-time key).

Shakespeare analyzes

The Friedman couple

In 1957, William and Elizebeth Friedman published the book The Shakespearian ciphers examined (German: Examination of the Shakespeare ciphers). In contradiction to the title, which the publisher had requested, they proved that there are no encrypted messages in Shakespeare's work that indicate a foreign authorship.

After the death of her husband William in 1969, Elizebeth Friedman retired into private life after a career of more than 50 years as a cryptologist. She sifted through and sorted out her husband's extensive scientific estate. This private collection of cryptographic material, perhaps the largest in the world, finally found its place in the library of the city of Lexington , Virginia , named after George C. Marshall , the author of the Marshall Plan .

Elizebeth Friedman is considered to be one of the most important cryptanalysts. A famous saying, which is attributed to her is: " Our office does not make 'em, we only break' em " (German: "Our office does not machts'e, we brechens'e only"). She died in 1980 at the age of 88.

Posthumous honors

Elizebeth Friedman in the Hall of Honor picture gallery (top row, second from left, next to her husband William)

In 1999, Elizebeth Friedman was inducted into the Hall of Honor (German: Ehrenhalle) of the National Security Agency (NSA). The peculiarity of this posthumous award is underlined by the fact that she was the first woman to be honored in this form.

In 2002, on the occasion of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the NSA, the OPS1 building was officially named the " William and Elizebeth Friedman Building ".

Works

  • William Friedman and Elizebeth Friedman: The Shakespearian ciphers examined . Cambridge University Press, 1957.

literature

Web links

  • Photo of Elizebeth Smith with George Fabyan in the summer of 1916 on the Riverbank Laboratories grounds at MarshallFoundation.org
  • Elizebeth Friedman in the NSA Hall of Honor . Retrieved July 9, 2010.
  • Shakespeare's folio . Retrieved July 7, 2008.
  • WorldCat The Shakespearean ciphers examined; an analysis of cryptographic systems used as evidence that some author other than William Shakespeare wrote the plays commonly attributed to him (English) by William Frederick Friedman and Elizebeth Friedman. Retrieved August 21, 2008.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Elizebeth Smith Friedman Collection - Biographical Sketch PDF 3.6 MB. Accessed: August 31, 2016.
  2. ^ Rudolf Kippenhahn: Encrypted messages, secret writing, Enigma and chip card . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, p. 45. ISBN 3-499-60807-3
  3. ^ Rudolf Kippenhahn: Encrypted messages, secret writing, Enigma and chip card . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, p. 43. ISBN 3-499-60807-3
  4. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer: Deciphered secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, p. 32.
  5. ^ Rudolf Kippenhahn: Encrypted messages, secret writing, Enigma and chip card . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, p. 44. ISBN 3-499-60807-3
  6. ↑ a b Elizebeth Friedman in the Hall of Honor of the NSA. Retrieved July 9, 2010.
  7. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer: Deciphered secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, p. 257.
  8. ↑ Fred B. Wrixon: Codes, Ciphers & Other Secret Languages ​​- From Egyptian Hieroglyphics to Computer Cryptology . Könemann, Cologne 2000, p. 598. ISBN 3-8290-3888-7
personal data
SURNAME Friedman, Elizebeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smith Friedman, Elizebeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cryptanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Huntington , Indiana
DATE OF DEATH October 31, 1980
Place of death Plainfield , New Jersey