Mary Hughes Budenbach

Mary Caroline Hughes was born in New York City[1] and raised in Scotch Plains, New Jersey,[2] the daughter of Harold Lincoln Hughes and Jane Plunkett Hughes. She attended The Hartridge School and graduated from Smith College in 1934, with a bachelor's degree in English.[3]

During World War II, Budenbach worked as a cryptanalyst with the United States Navy in Washington, D.C., focused on Japanese naval cryptosystems.[2] After the war, she continued working in as a cryptanalyst and consultant. After 1953, she was senior cryptologist, administrator, and, at one point, the highest-paid woman at the National Security Agency (NSA),[4] based at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland.[5] She worked on computerizing analytical tasks in cryptology, and chaired a committee on promotion and assignment for women at the NSA.[6] She described her work in 1969 as "challenging, fascinating, interesting and frustrating, but not romantic."[7]

Budenbach was recognized with the Navy's Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1945. In 1969, she received the Federal Woman's Award.[8][9] "When they heard of the award, many of my friends came to me and said 'Now we know where you work'," she told a reporter in 1969.[5] In 1975, the year she retired from the NSA, she received the agency's Exceptional Civilian Service Award.[4]

Mary Hughes married stockbroker Theodore Oswald Budenbach in 1940.[3] He died in 1982.[10] She died in New Jersey in 2005, aged 91 years.[6]

Budenbach's story was included in the book Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II (2017), by Liza Mundy.[11] Also in 2017, she was posthumously inducted into the NSA Hall of Honor.[6][12][13]