Mary D'Imperio (January 13, 1930, in Germantown,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

May 28, 2020, in Springfield, Virginia) was an American cryptographer.

Biography

Mary D'Imperio was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, January 13, 1930. Her father was the

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

sculptor, Dominic D'Imperio. D'Imperio received degrees in

comparative philology Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness i ...

and

classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

from which she graduated magna cum laude, and

structural linguistics Structural linguistics, or structuralism, in linguistics, denotes schools or theories in which language is conceived as a self-contained, self-regulating Semiotics, semiotic system whose elements are defined by their relationship to other element ...

from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. She was elected a member of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

at Radcliffe in 1950. Between 1960 and 1962, D'Imperio created the TEMAC (Text Macro Compiler) language for processing text. From 1987 to 2006, she was a frequent contributor to North American Breeding Bird Survey reports. She was introduced to the problem of the

Voynich Manuscript The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an otherwise unknown writing system, referred to as 'Voynichese'. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and stylistic anal ...

John Tiltman Brigadier John Hessell Tiltman, (25 May 1894 – 10 August 1982) was a British Army officer who worked in intelligence, often at or with the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) starting in the 1920s. His intelligence work was largely conn ...

in 1975. She wrote several books and journal articles about the

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...

. These include ''The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma'', ''The Voynich Manuscript: A Scholarly Mystery'', and ''An Application of

Cluster Analysis Cluster analysis or clustering is the task of grouping a set of objects in such a way that objects in the same group (called a cluster) are more similar (in some sense) to each other than to those in other groups (clusters). It is a main task of ...

and Multiple Scaling to the Question of "Hands" and "Languages" in the Voynich Manuscript''. According to a 1976 introduction by Vera Filby: "Her career has been with the government since 1951. She was a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and cryptanalyst, but thought of herself mainly as a

computer programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

"."New Research on the Voynich Manuscript - Proceedings of a Seminar,"
30 November 1976, Washington, DC. Transcribed by M. E. D'Imperio. She died May 28, 2020, in Springfield, Virginia.

Selected works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:D'Imperio, Mary 1930 births 2020 deaths American cryptographers National Security Agency cryptographers University of Pennsylvania alumni Radcliffe College alumni Women cryptographers