With a degree in mathematics and a Navy correspondence course
on cryptology, Wilma Davis was hired to work in the Army's Signal
Intelligence Service in the late 1930s. Her first assignment was
with the Italian diplomatic codes, which she exploited until 1942
when she transferred to the Japanese problem. Within two years,
she was the head of the department that solved and processed intercepted
Japanese Army code messages. At the end of the war, she moved
on to the Chinese team and then to the
Venona Project trying to break Soviet messages.
Ms. Davis left the cryptologic field a few times during her career, but she could not stay away. She returned to work on Venona and returned a second time during the Vietnam War, finally retiring in 1973.