Sonja Morawetz Sinclair
Sonja Morawetz Sinclair was a Czechoslovak-born Canadian journalist, author, and cryptographer. From the 1950s to the 1990s she worked independently for major Canadian publications including Time, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Maclean's, Chatelaine, Canadian Business, Financial Post, authored four books and worked as director of communication for Price Waterhouse. In June 2017 she was honoured by the British government for her service as a World War II codebreaker for an Ottawa branch of Bletchley Park signals intelligence between 1943 and 1945. She kept her wartime intelligence service secret from her closest family and friends for over seven decades.
Personal life
Morawetz Sinclair was born in Úpice, Czechoslovakia, on December 3, 1921, to parents Frida Glaser Morawetz and industrialist Richard Morawetz. She grew up in Prague. In late 1938, she fled Czechoslovakia through Nazi Germany to Great Britain. She spent a year at Badminton School in Bristol before moving to Canada. As a student at Trinity College, University of Toronto, she served as editor-in-chief of the Trinity Review.Morawetz Sinclair's sister-in-law Cathleen Synge Morawetz was a distinguished mathematician at NYU. Her brother Herbert Morawetz was also a notable chemist at NYU. Her brother Oskar Morawetz was a notable classical music composer.
Morawetz married Ric Sinclair in 1945; he died in 2006. They had two sons and a daughter. Sonja Sinclair died in Toronto on May 23, 2024, at the age of 102.