Portal:Biography/Selected article/2006, week 37

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Marian Rejewski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who, in 1932, solved the Enigma machine, the main cipher machine then in use by Germany. The success of Rejewski and his colleagues jump-started British reading of Enigma in World War II, and the intelligence so gained, code-named "Ultra", contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany. While studying mathematics at Poznań University, Rejewski attended a secret cryptology course conducted by the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, which he joined full-time in 1932. The Bureau had had no success in reading Enigma, and set Rejewski to work on the problem in late 1932. After only a few weeks he had deduced the secret internal wiring of the Enigma. Rejewski and two mathematician colleagues then developed an assortment of techniques for the regular decryption of Enigma messages, including the cryptologic "card catalog", the "cyclometer", and the cryptologic "bomb". Five weeks before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Rejewski and his colleagues presented their results on Enigma decryption to their French and British counterparts. Shortly after the outbreak of war, the Polish cryptologists were evacuated to France, and later to Britain. In Britain, Rejewski worked with a Polish unit solving low-level German ciphers. In 1946 Rejewski returned to his family in Poland and worked as an accountant, remaining silent about his cryptologic work until the Enigma story became public in the 1970s. (read more...)