Florence Newman Trefethen
Florence Marion Newman Trefethen (1921–2012) was an American codebreaker, historian of operations research, poet, and English instructor.
Also recorded as Florence N. Trefethen · Florence Trefethen · Florence Marion Newman Trefethen
Florence Newman Trefethen
- Full name
- Florence Marion Newman.
- Born
- 1921
- Died
- 2012
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- writer · cryptographer · historian · poet · university teacher
- Education
- Girton College · Bryn Mawr College
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wikidata · Q63847158 · wikipedia · Florence Newman Trefethen
In this article
Early life and education
Early life and education
Florence Marion Newman was born in 1921, in Philadelphia. She graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1943. She enlisted as a Naval officer during World War II, and served in the WAVES as a codebreaker. She was part of the Magic project, whose decryptions of Japanese communications led to the ambush and death of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. During this service she met naval officer and later mechanical engineering professor Lloyd M. Trefethen; they married in 1944. After the war, she came to Girton College, Cambridge on an Ottilie Hancock Bye Fellowship. She earned a Master of Letters there in 1946.
Career and later life
Career and later life
Trefethen taught English at Tufts University for many years, and served for 18 years as executive editor for the Council of East Asian Studies at Harvard University. She and her husband had had two children, quilter Gwyned Trefethen in 1953 and mathematician Lloyd N. Trefethen in 1955. She died on March 1, 2012.
Books
With Joseph F. McCloskey, Trefethen edited the book Operations Research for Management (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954). She wrote the first chapter of the book, an early history of the field of operations research. She is also the author of Writing a Poem (The Writer, 1970), on the process of writing poetry.
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The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Florence Newman Trefethen, revision 1350855675 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.The Annual Review of Girton College, 2012. 97 dead link. April 2026.
- 2.Graduate and undergraduate degrees are conferred. The College News. 29. 25. 3. June 8, 1943.
- 3.Astill, Ken. Dedication to Lloyd MacGregor Trefethen on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday. Journal of Fluids Engineering. {ASME} International. 121. 1. 3. 1999. 10.1115/1.2822008.
- 4.INFORMS. The origins of OR.
- 5.R. T. E., W. none. Quarterly of Applied Mathematics. Wiley. 14. 4. 391–392. January 1957. 10.2307/2281366.
- 6.Gittleman, Sol. The Quiet Men: Sol Gittleman, the university's former provost, remembers Tufts' postwar veteran-professors, the unsung heroes of academia. Tufts Now. November 11, 2013.
- 7.Jenkins, Paul. none. College Composition and Communication. 22. 2. 193–194. May 1971. 10.2307/356843.
- 8.Oxford University Press. Trefethen, Prof. Lloyd Nicholas, (Nick). Who's Who 2019. 2019. 10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U37988.
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Citations
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Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 18 September 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Florence HoweAuthor
- Florence May WrightAuthor
- Florence McLandburghAuthor
- Florence Merriam BaileyAuthor
- Florence NoivilleAuthor
- Florence of WorcesterAuthor
- Florence V. BrittinghamAuthor
- Florencia AbbateAuthor
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