Emily Anderson

Emily Anderson, OBE (March 1891 – October 1962) was an Irish scholar of German and a music historian who worked in the British Foreign Office.

She was born in Galway, Ireland, the daughter of physicist Alexander Anderson, a Presbyterian from Coleraine. Anderson became president of Queens College Galway in 1899.[1]

She was educated privately and won the Browne Scholarship in 1909 at QCG, where she received a B.A. in 1911.[1]She displayed a strong interest in the suffragette movement in Galway. After further study at universities in Berlin and Marburg, she taught for two years at Queen's College, Barbados.[1] She then returned in 1917 to Galway where she was appointed the first professor of German at University College Galway.[2]

Anderson resigned from her position in 1920. She moved to London and immediately joined the Foreign Office. In 1923 she published a translation of Benedetto Croce's book on Goethe. Between 1940 and 1943 she was seconded to the War Office and posted to Cairo: she was appointed OBE for the work she carried out in the Middle East.[3] She retired from the Foreign Office in 1951.[1]

In April 2023 Dr Jackie Uí Chionna, a historian at the University of Galway (NUI), published her biography of Emily Anderson OBE, 'Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain's greatest lady code breaker' and that Emily worked in British intelligence for thirty years.[4]

Anderson published the Letters of Mozart and his family, which she herself edited and translated. Her Letters of Beethoven was published in 1961. The Federal Republic of Germany awarded her the Order Of Merit (Officer's Cross First Class) for her work on Beethoven.[5]

She died at Hampstead, London in October 1962. Whilst lodging with the family of Patricia Bartley, Anderson recruited her to work at the Government Code and Cypher School (the forerunner of GCHQ).

The Royal Philharmonic Society awards the annual Emily Anderson Prize to young violinists in Anderson's honour.[2]

NUI Galway has named their concert hall the Emily Anderson Concert Hall in her memory. Music for Galway, in conjunction with NUI Galway, holds an annual concert in her honour. [2]