Hall of Honor

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Image gallery in the Hall of Honor (upper row left: William Friedman and his wife Elizebeth. Lower row left: John Tiltman)

The Hall of Honor (German: "Ehrenhalle") of the National Security Agency (NSA) was created in 1999 to honor important personalities who have made outstanding contributions to US cryptology through extraordinary pioneering achievements or great deeds .

The requirements for admission to this hall of honor have been deliberately set high. The honorees are said to have made outstanding contributions to the development of cryptology in the United States or to have worked through constant innovations in the field of cryptology over the entire period of their professional life. The high demands are made particularly clear by the motto of the hall of honor: These Were The Giants (German: "These were the Giants").

In the early days of US cryptology history, many of these "giants" made outstandingly valuable contributions in both important sub-areas of cryptology, namely cryptography , i.e. the security of one's own secret communication against unauthorized decryption , and in the field of cryptanalysis , i.e. the Extraction of information from encrypted foreign messages. This is also known as defensive and offensive cryptology. The first "giants" to get their place in the Hall of Honor made contributions to both defensive and offensive cryptology.

Since 1999, several personalities in American cryptology history have been inducted into the Hall of Honor every year . These are mostly US cryptologists. The first included William Friedman and his wife, Elizebeth Friedman, as well as Frank Rowlett , Abraham Sinkov , Solomon Kullback, and Agnes Meyer Driscoll . The first non-American was British Brigadier General John Tiltman in 2004.

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