Chris Christensen Northern Kentucky University.

Chris Christensen

Northern Kentucky University

Recruiting and Training Mathematicians as

Codebreakers

World War I

The Polish Cipher Bureau

The Government Code & Cypher School

The Search for “Cipher Brains”

Recruitment

I was teaching at the University of Minnesota; teaching mathematics. I tried to devise a crypt system … So I wrote to the Navy … Well, they didn’t need any more crypt systems, but they did need someone who had some ability as a analyst, and would I be interested in taking their crypt course?

Howard Campaigne

Recruitment

J. J. Eachus was a mathematics PhD from the University of Illinois. At the time of Pearl Harbor he was teaching at Purdue University-Indianapolis and as sort of a hobby he took a Navy correspondence course in cryptanalysis.

Recruitment

[Bill Wray and I] took a Navy course in cryptanalysis which had no connection with the college [Williams college]. I had to drop it because of heavy administrative duties but Bill completed it apparently very successfully. … I assume that the Navy was interested in recruiting mathematicians. There was no regular text – merely mimeographed material on methods of coding and decoding messages – substitution, transposition, etc., with exercises on each lesson. I would say there were about 12 lessons.

Donald E. Richmond

April 6, 1982

Recruitment

The Correspondence Course

Assignment 3Numerical Cipher Alphabets

Assignment 3, Problem 2

Justice John Paul Stevens

Mathematicians

Alfred Clifford(Top, 1)

Marshall Hall, Jr.(Middle, 2)

Andrew Gleason(Middle, 5)

National Security Agency

Cipher Brain?http://www.nku.edu/~christensen/