The Despatch Summer 2024

Alan Turing

Alan Turing is one of the many contributors to the Allied victory during World War Two. He was not a soldier. He was a mathematician, and he, and his team are credited for saving approximately 17 million lives by shortening the war by an estimated four years. He is also one of the fathers of Computer Science and AI. He was also gay, and that would be disastrous later in life. In 1939, Hitler ’ s armies poured across Europe, taking out France, Poland and Norway, and had begun attacking Eastern Europe, with operation Barbarossa already being planned out. In the Atlantic Ocean, German submarines slowly cut the vital food supplies coming in from America. If that line of supply were cut, it would starve Britain into surrender. The submarines (U - Boats), used a special code, known as Enigma. Enigma was almost impossible to break, and the code changed every day. Alan Turing was recruited to a secret government department situated in Bletchley Park, where he was assigned to Hut 8, which focused on U - Boats and cracking the Enigma. Alan was a very quirky person and not too popular with everyone else. He said that he took the job at Hut 8 as no one else wanted to work there so he could work in peace. He wore a gasmask in spring because of his hay fever, and even chained his mug to the radiator so no one else could use it. The British navy had managed to acquire an

Enigma machine, so it was up to Alan and his team to work out the Enigma setting, of which there was almost

46

Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker