Abraham Sinkov
| Abraham Sinkov | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
August 22, 1907 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Died | January 19, 1998 (aged 90) Maricopa, Arizona |
| Citizenship | American |
| Fields | Cryptography, Mathematics |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater |
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| Thesis | Families of Groups Generated by Two Operators of the Same Order (1933) |
| Doctoral advisor | Francis Edgar Johnston |
Abraham Sinkov (August 22, 1907 – January 19, 1998) was a US cryptanalyst.
Sinkov, the son of immigrants from Russia, was born in Philadelphia, but grew up in Brooklyn. After graduating from Boys High School he took his B.S. in mathematics from City College of New York. (By coincidence, one of his close friends at Boys High and CCNY was Solomon Kullback). Mr. Sinkov taught in New York City schools but was unhappy with the working conditions and anxious to use his mathematics knowledge in practical ways.
The opportunity for a career change came in 1930. Sinkov and Kullback took the Civil Service examination and placed high. Both received mysterious letters from Washington asking about their knowledge of foreign languages. Sinkov knew French and Kullback, Spanish. This was acceptable to their prospective employer, and they were offered positions as junior cryptanalysts. Although neither was quite certain what a cryptanalyst did, they accepted.
The small Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) organization (Sinkov and Kullback were the third and fourth employees there) had the primary mission of compiling codes and ciphers for use by the U.S. Army. Its secondary task was to attempt to solve selected foreign codes and ciphers—this was not necessarily done for intelligence purposes but to keep the cryptanalysts abreast of new developments in the field.
William Friedman put his new employees through a rigorous course of study of his own design in cryptology, bringing them to high levels of skill in making and breaking codes and ciphers. Friedman also encouraged other self-improvement endeavors: his employees trained summers at a camp at Ft. Meade to earn commissions in the military reserves. Both Sinkov and Kullback also went on to receive doctorates in mathematics. Sinkov received his PhD in mathematics in 1933 from The George Washington University. In 1936, Sinkov was assigned to the Panama Canal Zone, where he established the U.S. Army's first permanent intercept site outside the continental United States.
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