Biography
David Kahn was born in New York City to Florence Abraham Kahn, a glass manufacturer, and Jesse Kahn, a lawyer.
Kahn has said he traces his interest in cryptography to reading Fletcher Pratt's Secret and Urgent as a boy. Kahn is a founding editor of the Cryptologia journal. In 1969, Kahn married Susanne Fiedler; they are now divorced. They have two sons, Oliver and Michael.
He attended Bucknell University. After graduation, he worked as a reporter at Newsday for several years. He also served as an editor at the International Herald Tribune in Paris for two years in the 1960s.
It was during this period that he wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine about two defectors from the National Security Agency. This article was the origin of his monumental book, The Codebreakers.
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