Derek Taunt

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Derek Roy Taunt (16 November 1917^{(Note 1)} – 15 July 2004) was a British mathematician who worked as a codebreaker during World War II at Bletchley Park.

Taunt attended Enfield Grammar, then the City of London School ^[1]. He studied mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge between 1936 and 1939^[2]. He was accepted as a research student by G. H. Hardy, but this was postponed by the outbreak of World War II. Taunt registered with the Joint Recruiting Board, and was initially allocated to work on ballistics at Kemnal Manor in Chislehurst, preparing range tables for new weapons. Finding that the task required only trivial mathematics ("more like advanced arithmetic than real mathematics"^[2]), he sought to find more appropriate work, and was moved to Bletchley Park in August 1941. Taunt was assigned to Hut 6, the section in charge of decrypting the Enigma signals from the German Army and Air Force.

After his wartime work, he returned to Cambridge, and worked on group theory. He later became the bursar of Jesus College.

[edit] Notes

The obituary published in the Telegraph gives his birth date as the 16th^[1], while that in the 2004 Jesus College Annual Report incorrectly records it as the 17th^[3].

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b The Daily Telegraph, Derek Taunt, obituary, 23 July 2004
^ ^a ^b Derek Taunt, "Breaking German Naval Enigma", pp. 77-93 in Action this Day, edited by Ralph Erskine and Michael Smith, 2001, ISBN 0-593-04982-9
^ Jesus College Annual Report for 2004, p. 83-85