cryptanalysist
Who did Helen H. Bacon work for from 1946 to 1949?
Helen H . Bacon Helen Hazard Bacon ( March 9 , 1919 – November 9 , 2007 ) was professor of classics at Barnard College . She is known in particular for her work on Greek tragedy , especially Aeschylus . Bacon is also well known for her work on classical themes in the poetry of Robert Frost and in the mythological writing of Edith Hamilton . Bacon was president of the American Philological Association in 1985 . Career . Bacon spent her childhood first in Berkeley and then in Florence where her father , the poet Leonard Bacon , and her mother , the painter Martha Stringham Bacon , had settled amongst a group of fellow artists . The family returned to the US in 1932 and Bacon went on to read classics at Bryn Mawr College , gaining her BA in 1940 . In 1942 Bacon paused her graduate studies at the University of California , Berkeley ( 1940–1941 ) and Harvard University ( 1942 ) to join the United States Naval Reserve as a Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service ( WAVES ) . She worked in the Navys Communications Annex in Washington , D.C . where she was a cryptanalysist decoding Japanese radio communications . Bacon was one of a number of classicists employed by the Navy in this field of work , including her Bryn Mawr College professor , Richmond Lattimore . Bacon was known as Bake by her colleagues . Following World War II , Bacon returned to graduate studies at Bryn Mawr College and completed her PhD in 1955 with a dissertation entitled Barbarians in Greek Tragedy , which was published by Yale University Press in 1961 . Bacon taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro , then the Womans College of the University of North Carolina . Bacon also held a Fulbright Fellowship for a year to study at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens ( 1952–1953 ) . Bacon then taught at Smith College from 1953 to 1961 . While still untenured in 1960 , Bacon organised support amongst Smith College faculty and wider academic community for two junior colleagues who had been reported and arrested for possessing homosexual pornography . Although the two were subsequently exonerated , Smith College fired them . Bacon succeeded in getting the college to pay her colleagues back pay but not the reinstatement of their jobs . Bacon gained tenure after this episode but decided to leave Smith College shortly afterwards . The events of the time were recounted in Barry Werths The Scarlet Professor Newton Arvin : A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal ( 2001 ) . The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts awarded Bacon the David Burres Award in a ceremony at the Smith College Archives on April 29 , 2002 , stating that Bacon was amongst those:heroes who speak out for civil liberties when it counts most—at the moment when individual rights are violated . Bacon spent the rest of her career at Barnard College , where she taught classics from 1961 to her retirement in 1989 . She had permanent impact on the department when as chair Bacon made modern Greek a permanent part of the curriculum and started the tradition of the annual Barnard College Greek or Latin play . During this time , Bacon was a director of the American Philological Association ( 1976–79 ) and became president in 1985 , the third woman elected as president . Bacon taught graduate courses regularly at Columbia University and was a visiting professor at Harvard University and Hampshire College . During her summer vacations , Bacon taught classics in translation at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College , and she was awarded an honorary doctorate there in 1970 . With Pulitzer Prize poet Anthony Hecht , Bacon translated Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes , which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1973 . During her retirement , Bacon was a trustee of Meekins Library in Williamsburg from 1996 to 2001 . Work . In her presidential address to the American Philological Association in 1985 , Bacon talked about her lifelong preoccupation with the importance of the esthetic and literary features of Platos work . The content summary note for the Helen H . Bacon Papers , held at the library of Barnard College , describes her work as focusing on Aeschylus , Plato , Vergil , and Apuleius and the comic novel on the classical side , but including work on Robert Frost and Edith Hamilton which is more properly categorized as classical reception studies . An obituary in scholarly journal The Classical World , written by Nancy Felson , Deborah Roberts , and Laura Slatkin described her as well ahead of her time , a pioneer , and anticipat [ ing ] subsequent directions in the field , on account of Bacons engagement with literary theory and psychoanalytic theory . Selected publications . - “Mortal Father , Divine Mother : Aeneid IV and VIII,” in Poets and Critics Read Vergil , ed . Sarah Spence ( New Haven : Yale UP , 2001 ) pp . 76–85 - “The Poetry of Phaedo,” in Cabinet of the Muses : Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas G . Rosenmeyer , ed . Mark Griffith & Donald J . Mastronarde ( Atlanta , GA : Scholars Press , 1990 ) pp . 147–162 - “Aeschylus and Early Tragedy,” in Ancient Writers : Greece , ed . T.J . Luce ( New York : Scribners , 1982 ) - “In- and Outdoor Schooling : Robert Frost and the Classics,” American Scholar 43,4 ( Autumn 1974 ) pp . 640–9 - “Socrates Crowned,” Virginia Quarterly Review 35 ( 1959 ) pp . 415–30 - The Sibyl in the Bottle ( 1958 ) External links . - Guide to the Helen H . Bacon papers at Barnard College Archive