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David Kahn is a US historian, journalist and writer. He has written extensively on the history of cryptography and military intelligence. His first book was The Codebreakers (1967). Research for the first edition was completed in the early 1960s, and so it does not include information which became available later than that time. In particular, the story of cryptography in WWII was still then effectively classified. The most recent edition, published in 1996, has an additional chapter surveying the recent events and breakthroughs in cryptology since the first edition. However, the treatment is far less exhaustive than the rest of the book, although it does attempt to explain more recent developments, and covers, for example, the advent of public key cryptography and PGP. The Codebreakers is considered by many to be the definitive treatment of the history of cryptography.
Kahn traces his interest in cryptography to reading Fletcher Pratt's Secret and Urgent as a boy
Kahn worked as a reporter and an op-ed editor for Newsday until 1998.
Kahn is a founding editor of the Cryptologia journal.
In 1995, he was selected as the scholar in residence at the National Security Agency.
Kahn has written several other books on selected aspects of cryptography and its history.
Kahn taught journalism for a few years at New York University.
Kahn was awarded a doctorate (DPhil) from Oxford University in 1974.
Kahn grew up in and currently lives in Great Neck. He is divorced from Susanne Fiedler and has two sons, Oliver and Michael.
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