Shaun Wylie

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Shaun Wylie is a British mathematician and former World War II codebreaker.

Wylie was born in Oxford, England, and educated at Dragon School and then Winchester College.[1] He won a scholarship to New College, Oxford where he studied mathematics and classics.[1] In 1934, he went to study topology at Princeton University, obtaining a PhD in 1937 with Solomon Lefschetz as his supervisor.[2] At Princeton he met fellow English mathematician Alan Turing.[1]

During World War II, Turing was at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. Turing wrote to Wylie around December 1940, who was by then teaching at Wellington College, inviting him to work at Bletchley Park.[3] He accepted, and arrived in February 1941.[3] He joined Turing's section, Hut 8, which was working on solving the Enigma machine as used by the German Navy. He became head of the crib subsection,[4] and was a member of a panel of five "bombe controllers" established in mid-1942 to decide how to allocate time on the codebreaking machines.[5]

Wylie transferred in Autumn 1943 to work on "Tunny", a German teleprinter cipher[6]. He married Odette Murray, a WREN in the section.[7] In 1945, soon after the victory in Europe, Wylie demonstrated how Colossus — electronic machines used to help solve Tunny — could have been used unmodified to break the Tunny "motor wheels", a task which had been previously done by hand.[8] While at Bletchley Park, he became president of the dramatic club, and won an unarmed combat competition.[9] He had also played international hockey,[9] but according to fellow codebreaker I. J. Good, he "never mentioned any of his successes".[10]

After the war, he was a fellow at Trinity Hall and lectured in mathematics.[11] He was the PhD advisor for Frank Adams, Crispin Nash-Williams, William Tutte and Christopher Zeeman.[2] With Peter Hilton, he authored Homology Theory: An Introduction to Algebraic Topology, published in 1960.[10]

In 1958, he became Chief Mathematician at GCHQ, the UK signals intelligence organisation.[2] In July 1969, he was sent a draft paper by James H. Ellis, another GCHQ mathematician, about the possibility of what was termed "non-secret encryption", or what is now more commonly known as public-key cryptography, on which Wylie commented "unfortunately, I can't see anything wrong with this".[12] He retired in 1973, and taught at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys (later Hills Road Sixth Form College) in Cambridge for seven years.[2]

[edit] References

  • Ralph Erskine, "Breaking Air Force and Army Enigma", pp. 47-76 in Michael Smith and Ralph Erskine eds., Action This Day, 2001
  • David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma, 1991
  • Brian Randall, "Of Men and Machines", pp. 141-149 in B. Jack Copeland editor, Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers, Oxford University Press, 2006
  • Shaun Wylie, "Breaking Tunny and the Birth of Colossus", pp. 317-348 in Michael Smith and Ralph Erskine, editors, Action This Day, 2001,
  • Jack Good, "From Hut 8 to the Newmanry", pp. 204-222 in B. Jack Copeland editor, Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers, Oxford University Press, 2006
  1. ^ a b c An interview with Shaun Wylie on 21 June 1985, The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s, Transcript Number 45 (PMC45)
  2. ^ a b c d Shaun Wylie in the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. ^ a b Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, 1983, p. 198
  4. ^ Michael Smith, Station X, revised edition 2004, p. 117
  5. ^ Ralph Erskine, 2001, p. 58
  6. ^ Wylie, 2001, p. 318
  7. ^ Smith, 2004, pp. 159-160
  8. ^ Randall, 2006, p. 148
  9. ^ a b Kahn, 1991, pp. 137-138
  10. ^ a b Good, 2006, p. 209
  11. ^ "Notes on contributors", p. 532 in Michael Smith and Ralph Erskine, editors, Action This Day, 2001
  12. ^ Steven Levy, Crypto, 2001, p. 318

[edit] External links

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