“National Cryptologic Museum Opens New Exhibit on Dr. John Nash”, 2012-01-27 (; backlinks):
The National Cryptologic Museum’s newest exhibit, “An Inquisitive Mind: John Nash Letters”, features copies of correspondence between Dr. Nash and the National Security Agency (NSA) from the 1950s when he was developing his ideas on an encryption-decryption machine.
At the height of his career in mathematics, Dr. Nash wrote a series of letters to NSA, proposing ideas for such a machine. While the agency acknowledged his ideas, they were never adopted. The letters were preserved with NSA’s analysis in a collection of unsolicited correspondence received in 1955.
The unclassified letters and the agency’s analysis, portions of which were classified, remained protected in NSA’s records center until 2011, when the entire collection was reviewed and declassified. The entire collection is being formally accessioned to the National Archives and Records Administration and will be available for public viewing later this year.
Copies of Nash’s letters to NSA are on display at the National Cryptologic Museum with complete copies available for review in the museum’s library and on the museum’s web page.