Mathematician Alan Turing Is An Unsung Hero Of World War II
January 25, 2021 at 10:58 p.m.
By Max [email protected]
Moreover, Germany inhabited much of France and now had access to the Atlantic Ocean. More and more German submarines were under construction. British ships were being sunk at a rate of 40 more every month, and by October, that number had risen to more than 60. It seemed possible that the country could be starved into submission.
Something had to be done to decipher and crack German naval codes or all would be lost.
The Germans used a machine called Enigma to develop the codes. It consisted of a rotor cipher, a succession of concentrically arranged and numbered rotors or wheels with electronic contacts to create substitutions for each letter entered. Enigma would encode one single letter as a different letter every time that letter was pressed. Deciphering the extremely complicated device was critical and the British government gave that responsibility to a small group of individuals housed in Bletchley Park, a glorified village in rural Buckinghamshire well outside London.
Bletchley Park
The organization started in 1939 as the Government Code and Cypher School with a staff of 150 members. The numbers soon grew rapidly and Bletchley Park became the birthplace of modern computing. There were as many as 9,000 workers there in 1944.
Many famous codebreakers found their way into the organization, including Gordon Welkchman, Bill Tutte and Alan Turing.
Turing became the most well known, thanks to in-depth biographies and film depictions of his life some time later. His work and those of others likely changed the course of human history.
According to Michael Kerrigan in his book “Enigma Code Breakers,” this select group was able to outwit the U-boat threat in the Battle of the Atlantic, helped allies to victory in the Mediterranean by identifying Axis naval and air movements, understood German plans and troop dispositions before the Normandy landings and helped sink one of the largest German battleships.
A female codebreaker deciphered the Italian naval Enigma code and gave the Royal Navy a crucial advantage at the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941. It has been estimated that decoding was responsible for shortening the war by two or more years.
Alan Turing (1912-1954)
Turing is known by many as the Father of the Modern Computer for his conception of the theoretical stored-memory machine (known as the Turing Machine) and for the subsequent implementation of this idea in the creation of some of the world’s first working computers, the Automatic Computing Engine and the Manchester Mark 1. Machine.
The Turing Machine was a theoretical apparatus that consisted of a scanner, and a line of unlimited tape. The tape would be divided into squares that were either blank, or had one symbol on them (usually a 1 or a 0). The scanner would look at each square individually, read the instruction programmed on the square, and perform an operation based on the four functions it would be programmed to perform. Any given square on the tape could tell the machine to either move left one square, move right one square, print a symbol on the square, or change it’s state, meaning move on to the next set of instructions.
While at Bletchley Park Turing helped to design and build the bulky electromechanical code breaking machines called Bombes. By 1944, it developed into Collossus, an early electronic computer with 1600 vacuum tubes.
Early Life
Turing was born in London, the son of a colonial official and brought up largely in St. Leonard’s-on-Sea in Sussex. After studying at Sherbrooke School in Dorset, he went to Cambridge to study mathematics. His success won him a first class degree and a fellowship to Kings College.
By 1936, he set out the theoretical basis for a Universal Computing Machine and an invitation to attend Princeton University in the U.S. soon followed. He received his Ph.D. just two years later. His dissertation was entitled Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals which introduced the idea of ordinal logic.
He returned to Britain in time for the outbreak of the war in 1939. On Sept. 4, Alan reported to Bletchley Park to begin working on cracking the Enigma code.
Final Thoughts
After the war, Turing was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his wartime service, though the circumstances surrounding the award were not disclosed, as his contributions to the war effort were still classified. He was subsequently convicted of homosexuality, a crime at that time and he terminated his life, allegedly by suicide. Anna Revel’s book “Alan Turing: Enigma” describes a chronology of his incredible, fascinating and sad life.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. His new book “Science Snippets” is available from Amazon and other book sellers. It contains a number of previously published columns. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
Moreover, Germany inhabited much of France and now had access to the Atlantic Ocean. More and more German submarines were under construction. British ships were being sunk at a rate of 40 more every month, and by October, that number had risen to more than 60. It seemed possible that the country could be starved into submission.
Something had to be done to decipher and crack German naval codes or all would be lost.
The Germans used a machine called Enigma to develop the codes. It consisted of a rotor cipher, a succession of concentrically arranged and numbered rotors or wheels with electronic contacts to create substitutions for each letter entered. Enigma would encode one single letter as a different letter every time that letter was pressed. Deciphering the extremely complicated device was critical and the British government gave that responsibility to a small group of individuals housed in Bletchley Park, a glorified village in rural Buckinghamshire well outside London.
Bletchley Park
The organization started in 1939 as the Government Code and Cypher School with a staff of 150 members. The numbers soon grew rapidly and Bletchley Park became the birthplace of modern computing. There were as many as 9,000 workers there in 1944.
Many famous codebreakers found their way into the organization, including Gordon Welkchman, Bill Tutte and Alan Turing.
Turing became the most well known, thanks to in-depth biographies and film depictions of his life some time later. His work and those of others likely changed the course of human history.
According to Michael Kerrigan in his book “Enigma Code Breakers,” this select group was able to outwit the U-boat threat in the Battle of the Atlantic, helped allies to victory in the Mediterranean by identifying Axis naval and air movements, understood German plans and troop dispositions before the Normandy landings and helped sink one of the largest German battleships.
A female codebreaker deciphered the Italian naval Enigma code and gave the Royal Navy a crucial advantage at the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941. It has been estimated that decoding was responsible for shortening the war by two or more years.
Alan Turing (1912-1954)
Turing is known by many as the Father of the Modern Computer for his conception of the theoretical stored-memory machine (known as the Turing Machine) and for the subsequent implementation of this idea in the creation of some of the world’s first working computers, the Automatic Computing Engine and the Manchester Mark 1. Machine.
The Turing Machine was a theoretical apparatus that consisted of a scanner, and a line of unlimited tape. The tape would be divided into squares that were either blank, or had one symbol on them (usually a 1 or a 0). The scanner would look at each square individually, read the instruction programmed on the square, and perform an operation based on the four functions it would be programmed to perform. Any given square on the tape could tell the machine to either move left one square, move right one square, print a symbol on the square, or change it’s state, meaning move on to the next set of instructions.
While at Bletchley Park Turing helped to design and build the bulky electromechanical code breaking machines called Bombes. By 1944, it developed into Collossus, an early electronic computer with 1600 vacuum tubes.
Early Life
Turing was born in London, the son of a colonial official and brought up largely in St. Leonard’s-on-Sea in Sussex. After studying at Sherbrooke School in Dorset, he went to Cambridge to study mathematics. His success won him a first class degree and a fellowship to Kings College.
By 1936, he set out the theoretical basis for a Universal Computing Machine and an invitation to attend Princeton University in the U.S. soon followed. He received his Ph.D. just two years later. His dissertation was entitled Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals which introduced the idea of ordinal logic.
He returned to Britain in time for the outbreak of the war in 1939. On Sept. 4, Alan reported to Bletchley Park to begin working on cracking the Enigma code.
Final Thoughts
After the war, Turing was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his wartime service, though the circumstances surrounding the award were not disclosed, as his contributions to the war effort were still classified. He was subsequently convicted of homosexuality, a crime at that time and he terminated his life, allegedly by suicide. Anna Revel’s book “Alan Turing: Enigma” describes a chronology of his incredible, fascinating and sad life.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. His new book “Science Snippets” is available from Amazon and other book sellers. It contains a number of previously published columns. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
Have a news tip? Email [email protected] or Call/Text 360-922-3092