Agnes Meyer Driscoll

Agnes Meyer Driscoll (July 24, 1889 – September 16, 1971), known as Miss Aggie or Madame X, was an American cryptanalyst during both World War I and World War II. Edwin T. Layton described her as "without peer as a cryptanalyst".

Born in Illinois in 1889, Agnes May Meyer moved with her family to Westerville, Ohio in 1895 where her father, Gustav Meyer, had taken a job teaching music at Otterbein College. In 1909 he donated the family home to the Anti-Saloon League which recently moved its headquarters to Westerville.

Meyer attended Otterbein College from 1907 to 1909. In 1911, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Ohio State University, having majored in mathematics and physics and studied foreign languages, statistics, and music. She was fluent in English, French, German, Latin, and Japanese. From her earliest days as a college student, she pursued technical and scientific studies. After graduation, she moved to Amarillo, Texas, where she lived from 1911 to 1918 and worked as director of music at a military academy, and, later, chair of the mathematics department at the local high school.

On June 22, 1918, about one year after America entered World War I, Agnes Meyer enlisted in the United States Navy – America had just started allowing women to enlist. She was recruited at the highest possible rank of chief yeoman and after a stint in the Postal Cable and Censorship Office she was assigned to the Code and Signal section of the Director of Naval Communications. After the war ended she made use of an option to continue working at her post as a civilian. Except for a two-year hiatus, when she worked for a private firm, she would remain a leading cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy until 1949.

...
Wikipedia