Emily Anderson
Emily Anderson OBE (March 1891 – October 1962) was an Irish scholar of German, music historian and cryptanalyst for the British Foreign Office for almost 30 years. Anderson was born in Galway, Ireland, the daughter of physicist Alexander Anderson, a Presbyterian from Coleraine. Alexander Anderson became president of Queens College Galway (QCG) in 1899. She was educated privately and won the Browne Scholarship in 1909 at QCG, where she received a B.A. in 1911. She displayed a strong interest in the suffragette movement in Galway. After further study at universities in Berlin and Marburg, she taught for two years at Queen's College, Barbados. She then returned in 1917 to Galway where she was appointed the first Professor of German at University College Galway. Anderson resigned from her position in 1920. She moved to London and immediately joined the Foreign Office, where she worked as a cryptanalyst until her retirement. Whilst lodging with the family of Patricia Bartley, Anderson recruited her to work at the Government Code and Cypher School (the forerunner of GCHQ). Between 1940 and 1943 Anderson was seconded to the War Office and posted to Cairo: she was appointed OBE for the work she carried out in the Middle East. She retired from the Foreign Office in 1951. In April 2023 Dr Jackie Uí Chionna, a historian at the University of Galway (NUI), published her biography of Anderson: Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain's Greatest Female Code Breaker, revealing that Anderson had worked in British intelligence for thirty years. In 1923 Anderson published a translation of Benedetto Croce's book on Goethe. She edited and translated The Letters of Mozart and His Family, which was published in 1938. Her Letters of Beethoven was published in 1961. West Germany awarded Anderson the Order of Merit (Officer's Cross First Class) for her work on Beethoven. She died at Hampstead, London in October 1962. The Royal Philharmonic Society awards the annual Emily Anderson Prize to young violinists in Anderson's honour. NUI Galway has named their concert hall the Emily Anderson Concert Hall in her memory. Music for Galway, in conjunction with NUI Galway, holds an annual concert in her honour. See also
 Florence Moon
 Mary Donovan O'Sullivan

Sources
 Obituary, The Times, Monday, 29 October 1962; pg. 12; Issue 55534; col F
 On the "Western Outpost":Local Government and Women's Suffrage in County Galway, 1898-1918, Mary Clancy, pp. 557–587, in "Galway:History and Society", 1996
 Translated Penguin Book - at  Penguin First Editions reference site of early first edition Penguin Books. References

1891 births
1962 deaths
Academics of the University of Galway
Civil servants in the War Office
Civil servants in the Foreign Office
People from Galway (city)
People from County Galway
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
British women biographers
British biographers
Beethoven scholars
Mozart scholars
Irish cryptographers
Pre-computer cryptographers
Women cryptographers