If You Think Bill Nye’s Awesome, Wait Until You Hear About His Mom, Who Was A Top-Secret Code Breaker During World War II

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From 1993 to 1998, Bill Nye hosted the PBS children’s science show Bill Nye the Science Guy and became an icon in classrooms across the country. He made learning about planets, the climate, nutrition, and even chemistry feel cool.

However, you may not know that his mother, Jacqueline Jenkins-Nye, was a code breaker in the Navy during World War II and served as a massive source of inspiration for Bill’s career.

He’s opened up about how his family history is filled with academic achievement and scientific interests. His maternal grandfather was an organic chemist and Johns Hopkins University professor.

Plus, his father, Edwin “Ned” Nye, created a landmark work known as “Sundials of Maryland and Virginia,” and the Smithsonian holds a copy.

Still, it was his mother Jacqueline’s work that motivated him to pursue a technical career.

“My mom was a big believer in women doing everything. She encouraged everybody to be able to do math. She was good at math,” Bill recalled.

Bill admitted that he still doesn’t know much about what she did during WWII, saying she “took it with her to her grave.”

“People would ask her what she did during World War II, and she’d say, ‘I can’t talk about it, ha ha ha!'” Bill revealed.

In fact, it wasn’t until 2020 that he learned Jacqueline had been briefly stationed in Hawaii, where she worked on Japanese codes at the end of WWII.

Peter Greenway – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only

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What Bill does know is she reviewed codes that were decrypted from the German Enigma to provide information about ship locations, including vessels carrying supplies to the North Atlantic. The interception and deciphering of these codes are credited with shortening the war by a year and a half.

“So she wasn’t Rosie the Riveter, she was Rosie the Top-Secret Code Breaker,” Bill said.

How Jacqueline came to be a code breaker is a pretty remarkable story, too. She answered an ad in the Baltimore Sun, which was looking for people who enjoyed doing crossword puzzles. She relished solving puzzles and creating limericks.

After responding to that ad, Jacqueline and various other women were recruited from Goucher College. They were told about the secret, serious information they’d be handling and the severe consequences, like death, they’d face if they shared any details.

“As stressful as it was, that time during the war was the most satisfactory professional time in my mother’s career. She went on to be a successful Washington, DC bureaucrat–a GS17 deputy administrator in the Government Services Association (GSA). All a result of her service with the Navy as a code breaker,” Bill explained.

Jacqueline’s impact as a code breaker reportedly led her to become extremely interested in women’s liberation, marching in two Equal Rights parades. She passed away on March 30, 2000, but the barriers she broke down are remembered to this day.

“These women were some of the first to be entrusted with non-traditional work in the U.S. Women code breakers were another brick in the women’s liberation ziggurat,” Bill detailed.

The Science Guy himself is a big proponent of having more female representation in STEM careers, largely thanks to his mother’s influence.

“I would remind us that half of the humans are girls and women, so why don’t we have half of the scientists be women?” Bill asked.

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Katharina Buczek graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Digital Arts. Specializing ... More about Katharina Buczek

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