Alda Mary Milner-Barry

Alda Mary Milner-Barry (5 July 1893 – 26 March 1938) was a British cryptoanalyst and academic. She was a fellow and vice-principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, and part of MI1b, the British military intelligence unit of the War Office in World War I.

Personal life Alda Milner-Barry was born in 1893, the daughter of Edward Leopold Milner-Barry, Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Bangor, and his wife Edith Mary Milner-Barry . Her grandfather was William H. Besant, a mathematical fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Her younger brother, Stuart Milner-Barry, was a renowned chess player and would become a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during World War II.

Career While an undergraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge, (1912-1914) She completed the Medieval and Modern Languages tripos at Cambridge in two years, instead of the usual three, in 1914. In 1916, she graduated with first class honours in English and German. She immediately took up work as a translator in the Intelligence Department of the War Office. She became vice-principal of the college, remaining in that position until her death in 1938, at the age of 44, at a nursing home in Cambridgeshire.

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