[SIGCIS-Members] Joan Clarke, woman who cracked Enigma with Alan Turing

[McMillan, William W]

As everyone on this list knows, decoding efforts depended also on many codebreakers, mainly women, who worked by hand to find patterns in coded messages.  In honor of them on this Veterans Day here in the U.S., I offer this photo of one Mary Eunice Amos, my mother, in 1944 when she was serving in the U.S. Navy in Washington D.C. as a codebreaker:

http://cuaacs.org/bill/images/M_Amos_USN_1944.jpg

She had been a children's librarian before enlisting.  Still kicking at age 96!  Well, not doing much kicking anymore, but still talking about breaking codes.

Bill

________________________________________
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [members-bounces at sigcis.org] on behalf of Brian Randell [brian.randell at newcastle.ac.uk]
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2014 10:41 AM
To: Sigcis
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Joan Clarke,  woman who cracked Enigma with Alan Turing

Hi:

>From BBC News:

> Joan Clarke, woman who cracked Enigma with Alan Turing
>
> Joan Clarke's ingenious work as a codebreaker during WW2 saved countless lives, and her talents were formidable enough to command the respect of some of the greatest minds of the 20th Century, despite the sexism of the time.
>
> But while Bletchley Park hero Alan Turing - who was punished by a post-war society where homosexuality was illegal and died at 41 - has been treated more kindly by history, the same cannot yet be said for Clarke.
>
> The only woman to work in the nerve centre of the quest to crack German Enigma ciphers, Clarke rose to deputy head of Hut 8, and would be its longest-serving member.
>
> She was also Turing's lifelong friend and confidante and, briefly, his fiancee.
>
> Her story has been immortalised by Keira Knightley in The Imitation Game, out in UK cinemas this week.
<snip>

Full story at:

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29840653

Cheers

Brian Randell

School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brian.randell


_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members