
Women who had high-level roles in breaking codes - sonabinu
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171009-the-female-code-breakers-who-were-left-out-of-history-books
======
Mz
_And thanks to papers recently declassified, it is now known that during World
War Two Elizebeth helped to smash a network of Nazi spies trying to foment
fascist revolutions in South America – their ultimate goal being an attack on
the US. Many of these spies were arrested as a direct consequence of her and
her team’s work at the US Coastguard. However, for decades J Edgar Hoover and
the FBI claimed more or less all the credit for this achievement. Elizebeth,
sworn to secrecy and uninterested in publicity, stayed quiet._

Kind of what I figured. It isn't very wise or practical to loudly advertise
who does secret work during their own lifetime.

I suspect we know as much as we do about Turing in part because he committed
suicide at a relatively young age. When he was actually doing code breaking
for the military and couldn't talk about it, other military units referred to
his unit as "The Do Nothings" (IIRC).

~~~
wjnc
Agree. I recently visited Bletchley Park and one of the astonishing life
stories was of Bill Tutte. He was as instrumental as Turing and became a
professor in graph theory after WW2. Astonishing for me was that he had to
'restart' a career after the war in science, since nothing he did during the
war counted as professional experience. Obviously he did very well, but I
still felt for the people coming out Bletchley post-war. You had nothing of
professional experience to show, while at least some did groundbreaking stuff.
There must be untold stories of people whom did not become well-known.

~~~
lostboys67
This happened at los Alamos one famous music producer worked there but was
unable to use what he had learnt to complete his PHD so he went and invented
the modern recording studio set up and helped found Atlantic records

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masonic
"Left out" is an odd way to put it, given that anybody who published these
details would have violated the Official Secrets Act.

An excellent series using characters in these roles is "The Bletchley Circle"
(highly recommended, with great attention to historical detail).

~~~
dang
What you and Mz both pointed out makes the article's headline (rather
shamelessly) misleading, so I replaced it with language from the subtitle.

Edit: I also turned off flags on the article, assuming that people were mostly
flagging the (rather shamelessly) misleading title.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Why not have a comment- or flag list-box so people can tell you why they
flagged?

~~~
dang
It would be a step toward bureaucracy.

I do think about it from time to time, but since the temptation with features
like this is to grossly underestimate their cost, or maybe even not see it at
all, I err on the side of paranoid aversion to them, and in this way achieve
balance.

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Animats
Most of this is from NSA's historical website.[1]

[1] [https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-
fi...](https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-
publications/women/honorees/)

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axonic
Oh, because everyone else's story was told but theirs? Rly... 2017, year of
the pro-female SEO and marketing. BBC is doing what about it?

Flag this all you want, I'm a transgender female coder with a wife who also is
a computer scientist. Silence me some more while you post headlines about
women you hypocrites. Be sure to preach about freedom of speech too.

~~~
dang
This breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you to avoid snark and flamebait.
This was both. That's bad. Please read
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and don't post like this again.

Edit: it sounds like you have a rare perspective to share, and you're more
than welcome to share it here. But you need to follow the rules like everyone
else. Our idea here is to try to hold a container for interesting discussion.
It's forever fragile, and snark and flamebait have the effect on
interestingness that salt has on a slug.

A nice additional effect of posting civilly and substantively is that then
your perspective will more likely be truly received.

