

Joan Clarke, Woman Who Cracked Enigma with Alan Turing - lentil_soup
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29840653

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rasz_pl
>In 1939, Clarke was recruited into the Government Code and Cypher School

Sickening BBC propaganda, after all this years they still pretend Enigma was
cracked in England :/

Yes, this woman cracked enigma single handedly, by enlisting in school in the
same year British government receiver FULLY FUCKING CRACKED enigma model and
mathematical description from Polish cryptographers (Zygalski, Rozycki and
Rejewski).

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GotAnyMegadeth
That's interesting, I've never heard that before, do you have a reference?
Thanks

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xxxyy
Here you go:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Pol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Polish_breakthrough)

The 20 years between the wars were an amazing time in Poland. It was perhaps
the best time in Polish history of mathematics, with remarkable contributions
from Stefan Banach and his other Lvov friends:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Banach](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Banach)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_School_of_Mathematics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_School_of_Mathematics)

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kirsebaer
Exciting that a film is coming out about a female mathematician. Are there any
other examples in popular culture?

Here is some more info about other British female cryptographers:
[http://www.bletchleyparkresearch.co.uk/research-
notes/women-...](http://www.bletchleyparkresearch.co.uk/research-notes/women-
codebreakers/)

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njloof
Also exciting that a film is finally made about Alan Turing -- the BBC's
"Breaking the Code" notwithstanding.

It may be common knowledge now, but Alan Turing's sexuality was not even
mentioned when we learned about him in computer science in the 80's. I hope
Andrew Hodges is proud of this work.

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xyzzy123
Reality is generally more complicated than the simple narratives that make
sense to people. Binary sexuality is a nice story.

In a similar way, technical contributions often have a more storied history
than is really acknowledged. The kinds of people who get credit _tend_ be
those who want it.

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pbhjpbhj
This comment seems pretty reasonable to me, any downvoters want to say what it
is they find objectionable about it?

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alphonse23
Holy shit, a Keira Knightley movie about Alan Turing... 2014: the year
cryptography went mainstream..

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andyl
> Joan Clarke, Woman Who Cracked Enigma with Alan Turing

Only - Joan and Alan didn't crack Enigma. Worked on it yeah. Made improvements
sure. But cracked it - no.

A child can learn in 2 minutes that the Poles cracked Enigma. Why would the
BBC distort? Why would HN highlight these distortions?

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JoeAltmaier
"Alan Turing ... provided much of the original thinking that led to the design
of the cryptanalytical Bombe machines and the eventual breaking of naval
Enigma" \- Wikipedia

Apparently the German army Enigma was cracked because they didn't have
rigorous procedures, didn't rotate keys as often as they should. The German
Navy had strict discipline and it took Turing et. al. to crack the math before
those dispatches could be read.

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simonh
Exactly, as has been pointed out above Different use patterns and protocols
for Enigma encoding used by different branches of the German military were
cracked at different times by different people and teams.

The reason Bletchley Park is so famous is for three reasons. One is it cracked
the most rigorous and hardest to crack variants of Enigma. Another is that is
used forerunners of modern computers to do so and Alan in particular laid some
of the theoretical foundations for modern computer systems. Finally it's
because cracking the German Navy code basically saved Britain from
strangulation by the U-Boat blockade.

Yes Poles cracke Enigma first and this provided valuable intelligence, but
their explot would not have worked against the Navy variants and would not
have made any difference to the Battle of the Atlantic.

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palindrone
This movie is full of BS.

