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Gordon Welchman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(William) Gordon Welchman (June 15, 1906 – October 8, 1985) was a British mathematician and World War II codebreaker at Bletchley Park.
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Welchman envisaged an enhancement to Alan Turing's design for an electromechanical codebreaking machine, the bombe. Welchman's enhancement, the "diagonal board," rendered the device more efficient in breaking messages enciphered on the German Enigma machine. Bombes became a primary tool for decrypting Enigma during the war.
Welchman was head of Hut Six, the section at Bletchley Park responsible for breaking German Army and Air Force Enigma ciphers.
Welchman moved to the United States in 1948 and became a naturalised citizen in 1962. In that year, he joined the Mitre Corporation, working on secure communications systems for the US military. He retired in 1971. In 1982, he published The Hut Six Story.
- Gordon Welchman, The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes, first edition 1982; revised edition: M & M Baldwin, December 1997, ISBN 0-947712-34-8.
- Robin Denniston, "Welchman, (William) Gordon (1906-1985)" in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.
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