Known as “America’s first female cryptanalyst,” Elizebeth Smith Friedman was a master codebreaker who played a pivotal role in both world wars, but for many years, no one knew what she had done—not even her own family.
Elizebeth didn’t set out to be a codebreaker. In 1917, she was a 23-year-old English lit major, looking for an interesting job. That all changed when an eccentric millionaire whisked her off to his lavish country estate and recruited her to work on his passion project: finding the secret codes in Shakespeare’s plays. Elizabeth scoured the texts alongside a tiny team of self-taught codebreakers. No hidden messages surfaced. But soon, the U.S. government came knocking with a slightly higher priority mission. Perhaps her greatest coup was when she uncovered a Nazi spy ring in North America during World War II. J. Edgar Hoover took credit on behalf of the FBI, while Friedman signed an NDA, never speaking of her achievements, and fell into obscurity. Records of what she had done were found in the National Archives annex in College Park, Maryland.
EPISODE GUESTS
- Jason Fagone, journalist and the author of the Woman Who Smashed Codes
- Jennifer Wilcox, director of education at the National Cryptologic Museum
- Stuart Boersma, professor of mathematics at Central Washington University
- Chris Atchison, grandson of Elizebeth Smith Friedman
HOSTS
- Katie Hafner
- Carol Sutton Lewis
PRODUCERS
- Samia Bouzid [producer]
- Elah Feder [senior producer]
FURTHER READING
- The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone, Dey Street Books, 2017.
- Elizabeth’s unfinished memoir, Internet Archive, 1966
- Elizebeth Smith Friedman’s recovery of the wiring of two rotors from an enigma D machine, Stuart Boersma, Cryptologia, September, 2022 (behind a paywall)
- The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life Hardcover, Amy Butler Greenfield, Random House, October 2021
- The Cryptanalyst Who Brought Down the Mob, Text by Chad Bowers, Illustration by Deborah Lee, web comic (PBS) 2021.
- Code Breaker, Spy Hunter: How Elizebeth Friedman Changed the Course of Two World Wars, Laurie Wallmark (author), Brooke Smart (illustrator), Abrams Books for young readers, 2021.