Genevieve grotjan biography
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Genevieve Grotjan Feinstein | |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | 1912 |
| Died | 2006 (aged 93–94) |
| Spouse | Hyman Feinstein |
Genevieve Grotjan Feinstein (1912–2006) was an American mathematician and cryptanalyst. She worked for the Signals Intelligence Service throughout World War II, during which time she played an important role in deciphering the Japanese cryptography machine Purple, and later worked on the Cold War-era Venona planerat arbete .
Career[]
Feinstein discovered a passion for mathematics at a young age and aspired to become a math teacher until the beginning of World War II, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it possible for women to fulfill non-combat roles in the military. She passed the necessary tests to become a government mathematician in 1939, and was hired by William F. Friedman to work as a cryptanalyst for the Army's Signals Intelligence Service (SIS). For eighteen months, she worked with other SIS codebreakers to decipher the code
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Genevieve Grotjan Feinstein
American mathematician and cryptanalyst (1913–2006)
Genevieve Marie Grotjan Feinstein (April 30, 1913 – August 10, 2006) was an American mathematician and cryptanalyst. She worked for the Signals Intelligence Service throughout World War II, during which time she played an important role in deciphering the Japanese cryptography machine Purple, and later worked on the Cold War-era Venona project.
Career
[edit]Feinstein discovered a passion for mathematics at a young age and aspired to become a math teacher. She graduated from the University at Buffalo summa cum laude in February 1936 with a mathematics degree. Unable to find a teaching job, she took a position as a statistical clerk at the Railroad Retirement Board.[2] Her high score on a civil service mathematics test in 1939 got the attention of William F. Friedman, who hired her to work as a junior cryptanalyst for the Army's Signals Intelligence Service (SIS). For eighteen months
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An American Hero
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Genevieve Grotjan applied her dazzling mathematical skills to unraveling enemy codes during World War II
Grotjan yearbook photo courtesy of University Archives
Story by Ann Whitcher Gentzke | Photo illustration by Bob Wilder, BFA ’02
IT WAS SEPT. 20, 1940, a hot, sticky day, and Genevieve Grotjan (BA ’36) was calmly scrutinizing the enciphered messages spread out before her on a plain wooden table—as she had been doing on a near daily basis for the past year. The pressure was unrelenting on members of her small U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) team to unravel the Japanese cipher known as Purple. But Grotjan showed no outward stress other than to occasionally scratch her head.
Her composure notwithstanding, Grotjan knew the stakes were high. As long as Purple remained impervious to American codebreakers, the U.S. had almost no access to top-level Japanese diplomatic messages distributed by