Barbara Clark served in the Pacific during WWII as a member of the Woman’s Army Corps. She returned to federal service in early 1951 with the Armed Forces Security Agency as a Special Research Analyst doing research and reporting. As a Senior research analyst at NSA with foreign language capability, she served in four different production elements dealing with a wide range of international issues.
Dorothy Toplitzky Blum significantly changed the way NSA did cryptanalysis, pioneering the use of computers to manipulate and process data automatically.
Cryptanalyst and pioneer in U.S. cryptology
Skilled cryptanalyst whose successful breakthrough enabled the Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) to build an analog machine that solved the Japanese diplomatic system known as “Purple.” Exploitation of this system provided crucial intelligence in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters during World War II.
Computer network pioneer Hilda Faust Mathieu was an early advocate recognizing network vulnerabilities and one of the driving forces developing security controls for network protection at the NSA.
Agnes Meyer Driscoll’s work as a navy cryptanalyst who broke a multitude of Japanese naval systems, as well as a developer of early machine systems, marks her as one of the true “originals” in American cryptology.
Ann Caracristi began her career with the Army’s cryptologic organization during World War II. After a brief civilian career immediately following the war, she joined one of NSA’s predecessor organizations as a cryptanalyst.
Marie Meyer was a language scholar from Illinois with a Master’s Degree in Latin as well as knowledge of Greek German and Sanskrit hired as a cryptographer by the Signal Security Agency in 1943. She became the first person to receive NSA’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award.
Mary Budenbach, a graduate of Smith College and known to all as “Polly,” joined the Navy’s cryptologic organization, OP-20-G, in 1943. Trained as a cryptanalyst, she worked against Japanese naval ciphers during World War II.
She joined with other Richmond Unionists to create an underground network to hinder the Confederate war effort and give aid and comfort to captured Union soldiers during the United States’ Civil War.