Bletchley Girl and Enigma: a Citation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

The Wychwood December/January 2009/10 Vol30No5 Special Feature Bletchley Girl and Enigma: A Citation Miss Pauline Elliott, could sing madrigals, musician and Latin which she enjoyed scholar, has been and played the given a medal and Sorceress in a citation by Gordon production of Brown for her work Purcell’s Dido and at Bletchley Park Aeneas . Sometimes during the Second she went on her bike World War - but she to Milton Keynes. claims it is all a Pauline became mistake! Her sister friendly with the was an brilliant accomplished mathematicians, mathematician, and Hugh Alexander and was actively recruited to work at Shaun Wylie. Bletchley, however, her sister had just had a baby, and her husband was away, Code Broken but Lives Still Lost so Pauline went to Bletchley in her Alexander was Turing’s successor as sister’s place! head of Hut 8; Pauline adds that “only Pauline says she was good at languages, Turing made a bigger contribution to the and had excellent French and German, so success of Hut 8 than Wylie.” Pauline those were useful tools for her work with remained friendly with Hugh Alexander Naval Intelligence and she was able to after the war, and looked after him to his help with the wording of intercepted dying day. She and her sister were both messages. However, she modestly claims students at the Dragon School where she was not the mathematical brain they Shaun Wylie spotted Pauline’s sister’s really wanted to help Alan Turing break mathematical talents. the German Enigma code with his One of the high points in Pauline’s years Bombe machine. at Bletchley was the time when Winston Churchill, accompanied by several A Very Proper Gentleman Admirals, came to Bletchley specifically She characterises Turing, as a ‘very to apologise to the people working there proper gentleman’, with impeccable for the fact that although the code had manners and grooming who did not been broken, British ships were still deserve the treatment he received later being sunk. Pauline says the women for his homosexual leanings. “I was working there were very angry that ignorant of homosexuality then, and just innocent men’s lives were not being thought he was strange and very brilliant. saved as a result of their work. Churchill He intimidated me conversationally, explained in 1941 that it was still because he didn’t seem to want to talk necessary to keep the Germans from about mundane things.” knowing their code was broken. Life at Bletchley was entertaining; she Peggy Walmsley 21 .

Copy Link

Recommended publications

OBITUARY 307 Obituary Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS 1925–2016
OBITUARY 307 Obituary Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS 1925–2016 Christopher Zeeman was born in Japan on 4 February 1925 to a Danish father, Christian, and British mother, Christine. When he was one year old, his parents moved to England. He was a pupil at the independent school Christ's Hospital, in Horsham, West Sussex. Between 1943 and 1947 he was a flying officer in the Royal Air Force. In a career change that was to have major impact on British mathematics, he studied the subject at Christ's College, Cambridge University, graduating with an MA degree. He then carried out research for a PhD at Cambridge, supervised by the topologist Shaun Wylie. His topic was an area of algebraic topology, which associates abstract algebraic structures (‘invariants’) to topological spaces in such a way that continuous maps between spaces induce structure-preserving maps between the corresponding algebraic structures. In this manner, questions about topology can be reduced to more tractable questions in algebra. His thesis combined two such invariants, homology and cohomology, which go back to the seminal work of Henri Poincaré at the start of the 20th century.* The result was named dihomology. He introduced an important technical tool to extract useful information from this set-up, now known as the Zeeman spectral sequence. His work led Robert MacPherson and Mark Goresky to invent the basic notion of intersection homology; these ideas in turn led to proofs of some major conjectures, including the Kazhdan–Lusztig conjectures in group representation theory and the Riemann–Hilbert correspondence for complex differential equations.
[Show full text]
Responding to the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Business
THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Responding to the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Business MARK SKILTON & FELIX HOVSEPIAN The 4th Industrial Revolution “Unprecedented and simultaneous advances in artifcial intelligence (AI), robotics, the internet of things, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, nanotechnology, bio- technology, materials science, energy storage, quantum computing and others are redefning industries, blurring traditional boundaries, and creating new opportuni- ties. We have dubbed this the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and it is fundamentally changing the way we live, work and relate to one another.” —Professor Klaus Schwab, 2016 Mark Skilton · Felix Hovsepian The 4th Industrial Revolution Responding to the Impact of Artifcial Intelligence on Business Mark Skilton Felix Hovsepian Warwick Business School Meriden, UK Knowle, Solihull, UK ISBN 978-3-319-62478-5 ISBN 978-3-319-62479-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62479-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948314 © Te Editor(s) (if applicable) and Te Author(s) 2018 Tis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Te use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
[Show full text]
Profalanturing-Decoded-Biography
CONTENTS Title Introduction 1. Unreliable Ancestors 2. Dismal Childhoods 3. Direction of Travel 4. Kingsman 5. Machinery of Logic 6. Prof 7. Looking Glass War 8. Lousy Computer 9. Taking Shape 10. Machinery of Justice 11. Unseen Worlds Epilogue: Alan Turing Decoded Notes and Accreditations Copyright Blue Plaques in Hampton, Maida Vale, Manchester and Wilmslow. At Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing did the work for which he is best remembered, there is no plaque but a museum exhibition. INTRODUCTION ALAN TURING is now a household name, and in Britain he is a national hero. There are several biographies, a handful of documentaries, one Hollywood feature film, countless articles, plays, poems, statues and other tributes, and a blue plaque in almost every town where he lived or worked. One place which has no blue plaque is Bletchley Park, but there is an entire museum exhibition devoted to him there. We all have our personal image of Alan Turing, and it is easy to imagine him as a solitary, asocial genius who periodically presented the world with stunning new ideas, which sprang unaided and fully formed from his brain. The secrecy which surrounded the story of Bletchley Park after World War Two may in part be responsible for the commonly held view of Alan Turing. For many years the codebreakers were permitted only to discuss the goings-on there in general, anecdotal terms, without revealing any of the technicalities of their work. So the easiest things to discuss were the personalities, and this made good copy: eccentric boffins busted the Nazi machine.
[Show full text]
BREAKING NAVAL ENIGMA (DOLPHIN and SHARK) by Ralph Erskine
BREAKING NAVAL ENIGMA (DOLPHIN AND SHARK) by Ralph Erskine This note outlines the methods used by BP's Hut 8 to break naval Enigma. There can be little doubt that the naval Enigma decrypts helped to shorten the war, although it is not possible to give a precise period. The German Navy's three-rotor Enigma machine (M3) was identical to the model used by the German Army and Air Force, but it was supplied with three additional rotors, VI, VII and VIII, which were reserved exclusively for naval use. However, the German Navy also employed codebooks, which shortened signals as a precaution against shore high-frequency direction-finding, and some manual ciphers. The codebooks most often used were the Kurzsignalheft (short signal book) for reports such as sighting convoys, and the Wetterkurzschlüssel (weather short signal book) for weather reports. The relevant codegroups were super-enciphered on Enigma before being transmitted by radio. Naval Enigma signals used a number of different ciphers, each with its own daily key (rotor order, ring settings, plugboard connections and basic rotor setting). The principal cipher was Heimisch (known to BP as Dolphin), for U-boats and surface ships in home waters, including the Atlantic. At least 14 other naval Enigma ciphers were used during the war. Most ciphers had Allgemein (general) and Offizier keys. Offizier signals were first enciphered using the plugboard connections from monthly Offizier keylists. The complete message was then enciphered a second time using the Allgemein key. A few ciphers also had Stab (Staff) keys, which were also doubly enciphered, but had their own special settings.
[Show full text]
Tese-Letícia-Perani.Pdf
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro Centro de Educação e Humanidades Faculdade de Comunicação Social Letícia Perani Soares “O maior brinquedo do mundo”: a influência comunicacional dos games na história da interação humano-computador Rio de Janeiro 2016 Letícia Perani Soares “O maior brinquedo do mundo”: a influência comunicacional dos games na história da interação humano-computador Tese apresentada, como requisito parcial para obtenção do título de Doutora, ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (PPGCom/UERJ). Orientadora acadêmica: Profa. Dra. Fátima Cristina Regis Martins de Oliveira Rio de Janeiro 2016 CATALOGAÇÃO NA FONTE UERJ / REDE SIRIUS / BIBLIOTECA CEH/A S676 Soares, Letícia Perani. “O maior brinquedo do mundo”: a influência comunicacional dos games na história da interação humano-computador / Letícia Perani Soares. – 2016. 187 f. Orientadora: Fátima Cristina Regis Martins de Oliveira. Tese (Doutorado) – Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Faculdade de Comunicação Social. 1. Comunicação Social – Teses. 2. Vídeogames – Teses. 3. Computadores e civilização – Teses. I. Oliveira, Fátima Cristina Regis Martins de. II. Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Faculdade de Comunicação Social. III. Título. es CDU 316.77 Autorizo, apenas para fins acadêmicos e científicos, a reprodução total ou parcial desta dissertação, desde que citada a fonte. ___________________________________ 08/07/2016 Assinatura Data Letícia Perani Soares “O maior brinquedo do mundo”: a influência comunicacional dos games na história da interação humano-computador Tese apresentada, como requisito parcial para obtenção do título de Doutora, ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (PPGCom/UERJ).
[Show full text]
The History of Cracking the ENIGMA Machine
From Poznań to Bletchley Park : the history of cracking the ENIGMA machine: Marie-José Durand-Richard1 Philippe Guillot2 INTRODUCTION During World War II, the Allies could read many of the German ciphered messages they intercepted in plain text almost immediately, providing them with an advantage that had a significant impact on the course of the conflict. Movies such as Enigma (1999) and The Imitation Game (2015), highlight the success of the work of the British at Bletchley Park, and particularly the work of the mathematician Alan Madison Turing (1912-1954). But Turing did not work alone on breaking the Enigma code at Bletchley Park, and it is much less well-known that during the 1930s, the Poles had already accomplished the feat of making transparent the enciphered communications between the German army and its General Staff. So, the history of breaking the Enigma code is rather more complicated than is shown in such hagiographic movies. In this perspective, this paper focuses on the various skills at work in cracking the Enigma machine. In the period from 1932 to 1942, both the French and the British considered military intelligence would be more essential than mathematical cryptanalysis in overcoming the problem. However, their political and geographical situation stimulated the Poles to coordinate their technical, mathematical and political capabilities. Cyclometers, Bombas and perforated sheets were produced to help them overcome complications gradually introduced by the German armies in their Enigma ciphering methods. As early as 1936, the British codebreaker A. Dillwyn (Dilly) Knox (1884-1943) started a manual cryptanalysis of the commercial Enigma code at the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) and succeeded in breaking the code of its Spanish and Italian versions in 1937.
[Show full text]
WILLIAM THOMAS TUTTE 14 May 1917 – 2 May 2002
WILLIAM THOMAS TUTTE 14 May 1917 – 2 May 2002 Elected FRS 1987 D. H. YOUNGER University of Waterloo Jeanne Youlden, the niece of William Tutte, received the following letter from the Prime Minister: 2 William Tutte was born 17 May 1917 at Fitzroy House, Newmarket, Sussex. His father, William John Tutte, was the gardener at that House; his mother, Annie Newell, was the housekeeper. They had just one other child, Joseph, sixteen years older than Bill. Joseph and his wife Lola had two children, Joseph and Jeanne, the latter the recipient of the Prime Minister’s letter. Bill’s grandparents lived in Burnham Beeches, Buckingham: his paternal grandfather Thomas Tutte was a policeman; his maternal grandfather Joseph Newell was, as known to Bill, an “exploder of tree stumps.” EARLY YEARS In Bill’s early years, the family moved several times: they lived for a while at Englefield Green, not far from Burnham Beeches. They then moved to Croft Spa, Durham, where Lewis Carroll lived as a boy; as an adult, Tutte loved Carroll’s playful wit and mathematics-based imagery. When Bill was about 4, the family moved to Yorkshire where his parents became caretakers of a house called ‘Moorend’ in the village of Aislaby, about three miles inland froM Whitby. Tutte later referred to this as his Garden of Eden. He loved the bracken and gorse, the wild bilberries, the heather, and the buttercups. There was from the moor’s edge a sweeping view of the Esk valley far below. He “loved the sandy beaches at Whitby and the hundred and ninety-nine steps, and the Church and Abbey ruins to which they led.” It was at Aislaby that he began school.
[Show full text]
Ront Ourt Ront Ourt Front Court Front Court
front court Front court Front court Front court Front Front court court front court Front Front court court Trinity Hall CAMBRIDGE Highlights Shaun Wylie Remembered Meet the New Vice-Master Fitzwilliam Museum & Trinity Hall Connections THA Awards Taking off to Thailand, the Himalayas and Ethiopia Issue 16 | Summer 2010 Trinity Hall Front Court Welcome We welcome the new decade with a revitalised Front Court which we hope you will enjoy. Following on from comments made during this year’s telephone campaign, it was suggested that more articles covering current areas of research would be appreciated and to that end we have two very interesting research articles: one, a history of the crusaders by our Schulman Research Fellow, Dr Teresa Shawcross; the other, on the decline of languages in the world by Research Fellow, Dr Stephen Pax Leonard. The sad passing of Dr Shaun Wylie is marked in this issue by an engaging look at his life written by his son, Malcolm (TH 1967). Professor Robert Cumming (TH 1962) discovers the connections between the Hall and About Front Court the Fitzwilliam Museum. Front Court is an informal publication produced once a year to keep members Front Court is this year being sent out in electronic form to all of you up-to-date with College and alumni news. for whom we have email addresses. If you would prefer to receive Front Court electronically in the future, then do please email me at If you have any suggestions for the next issue (Summer 2011), please contact [email protected]. the Editors.
[Show full text]
The Alan Turing, the Enigma: the Book That Inspired the Film, the Imitation Game Free
FREE THE ALAN TURING, THE ENIGMA: THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED THE FILM, THE IMITATION GAME PDF Andrew Hodges,Douglas R. Hofstadter | 768 pages | 30 Jun 2015 | Princeton University Press | 9780691164724 | English | New Jersey, United States Alan Turing: The Enigma | Princeton University Press Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. Enabling JavaScript in your browser will allow you to experience all the features of our site. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. History by The Imitation Game. NOOK Book. This New York Times —bestselling biography of the founder of computer science, with a new preface by the author that addresses Turing's royal pardon inis the definitive account of an extraordinary mind and life. At the same time, this is the tragic account of a man who, despite his wartime The Imitation Game, was eventually arrested, stripped of his security clearance, and forced to undergo a humiliating treatment program--all for trying to live honestly in a society that defined homosexuality as a crime. The inspiration for a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, Alan Turing: The Enigma is a gripping story of mathematics, computers, cryptography, and homosexual persecution. Perceptive and absorbing, Andrew Hodges's book is scientific biography at its best. It is hard to imagine a more thoughtful and compassionate portrait of a human being. Home 1 Books 2. Read the Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film excerpt of this book! Add to Wishlist.
[Show full text]
View This Volume's Front and Back Matter
Christopher Hollings HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS Y VOLUME 41 Mathematics Across the Iron Curtain A History of the Algebraic Theory of Semigroups https://doi.org/10.1090/hmath/041 HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS v VOLUME 41 Mathematics Across the Iron Curtain A History of the Algebraic Theory of Semigroups Christopher Hollings American Mathematical Society Providence, Rhode Island Editorial Board June Barrow-Green Bruce Reznick Robin Hartshorne Adrian Rice, Chair 2010 Mathematics Subject Classiﬁcation. Primary 01A60, 20-03. For additional information and updates on this book, visit www.ams.org/bookpages/hmath-41 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hollings, Christopher, 1982– Mathematics across the Iron Curtain : a history of the algebraic theory of semigroups / Christopher Hollings. pages cm. — (History of mathematics ; volume 41) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 978-1-4704-1493-1 (alk. paper) 1. Semigroups. 2. Mathematics—History—20th century. 3. Cold War. I. Title. QA182.H65 2014 512.27—dc23 2014008281 Copying and reprinting. Individual readers of this publication, and nonproﬁt libraries acting for them, are permitted to make fair use of the material, such as to copy a chapter for use in teaching or research. Permission is granted to quote brief passages from this publication in reviews, provided the customary acknowledgment of the source is given. Republication, systematic copying, or multiple reproduction of any material in this publication is permitted only under license from the American Mathematical Society. Requests for such permission should be addressed to the Acquisitions Department, American Mathematical Society, 201 Charles Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02904-2294 USA. Requests can also be made by e-mail to [email protected].
[Show full text]
The Contributions of W.T. Tutte to Matroid Theory
The contributions of W.T. Tutte to matroid theory Graham Farr and James Oxley Abstract Bill Tutte was born on May 14, 1917 in Newmarket, England. In 1935, he began studying at Trinity College, Cambridge reading natural sciences specializ- ing in chemistry. After completing a master’s degree in chemistry in 1940, he was recruited to work at Bletchley Park as one of an elite group of codebreakers that included Alan Turing. While there, Tutte performed “one of the greatest intellec- tual feats of the Second World War.” Returning to Cambridge in 1945, he com- pleted a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1948. Thereafter, he worked in Canada, ﬁrst in Toronto and then as a founding member of the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo. His contributions to graph theory alone mark him as arguably the twentieth century’s leading researcher in that subject. He also made groundbreaking contributions to matroid theory including proving the ﬁrst excluded-minor theorems for matroids, one of which generalized Kuratowski’s Theorem. He extended Menger’s Theorem to matroids and laid the foundations for structural matroid theory. In addition, he introduced the Tutte polynomial for graphs and extended it and some relatives to matroids. This paper will highlight some of his many contributions focusing particularly on those to matroid theory. 1 Introduction The task of summarizing Bill Tutte’s mathematical contributions in a short paper is an impossible one. There are too many, they are too deep, and their implications are too far-reaching. This paper will discuss certain of these contributions giving Graham Farr Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia, e-mail: [email protected] James Oxley Mathematics Department, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA, e-mail: ox- [email protected] 1 2 Graham Farr and James Oxley particular emphasis to his work in matroid theory and the way in which that work links to graph theory.
[Show full text]
Ramping up to World War II
Chris Christensen Northern Kentucky University Whitfield Diffie Martin Hellman Girolamo Cardano François Viète (1501 – 1576) (1540 – 1603) Alan Turing I J Good Philip Hall Peter Hilton David Rees Max Newman J.H.C. Whitehead Shaun Wylie Gordon Welchman 1999 inductee to the NSA/CSS Hall of Honor. 1924 Safford reported to the newly established Cryptographic Research Desk in naval communications. July 1924 section of the monthly bulletin devoted to cryptanalysis. Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale in 1929. 1931 studied at Gottingen. Was an associate professor of mathematics at Yale when he recruited mathematicians to serve with the Navy. Commanded OP-20-G Research Section. After World War II, co-founded Engineering Research Associates (ERA) that delivered the first Atlas computer to the Navy in 1950. The commercial version of Atlas was Univac. 1957 – 1958 Deputy director of research and development for NSA. Then deputy director of NSA. After leaving NSA was vice president of Sperry Rand. Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Yale in 1942 and began service with the Navy. After World War II was appointed a Junior Fellow at Harvard. He never received a Ph.D. Known for his work on Hilbert’s Fifth Problem. 1969 appointed Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy (the oldest endowed scientific position in the US). 27 Ph.D. students Studied for a year in England with Philip Hall, Harold Davenport, and G. H. Hardy – 1933. Ph.D. from Yale 1936; student of Oystein Ore. One year at the Institute for Advanced Study and then accepted a position at Yale. Taught at Yale until service with the Navy.
[Show full text]