<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/29/bletchley-park-codebreaker-joan-clarke-honoured-with-blue-plaque>
"Joan Clarke, the second world war codebreaker who was played by Keira
Knightley in the 2014 film
The Imitation Game, has been honoured with a
commemorative blue plaque ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-day.
The plaque was unveiled on Wednesday at Clarke’s childhood home in south
London, English Heritage said.
Clarke was a gifted mathematician who was recruited to work at Bletchley Park,
the government codebreaking centre, where she was assigned to work in Hut 8
with Alan Turing. The pair later became secretly engaged but the engagement was
broken off when Turing revealed he was gay. They remained friends.
Under Turing’s leadership, the Hut 8 team developed cryptanalysis allowing them
to read intercepted German naval communications. The intelligence they gleaned
from these encrypted messages helped to markedly reduce the number of allied
ships destroyed by the German navy, from about 100 a month to less than 20 in
November 1941.
“Joan was part of a team of brilliant cryptanalysts working in Hut 8 at
Bletchley during the second world war,” said Susan Skedd, blue plaques
historian at English Heritage. “They decoded more than a million intercepted
German naval messages enciphered on the Enigma machines and so enabled allied
ships to consistently avoid German U-boats.
“Eighty years ago this week, the work that so enthralled Joan would have been
dramatically intensifying, as the allied forces prepared for the D-day
invasions.”"
Via Violet Blue’s
Cybersecurity Roundup: June 4, 2024
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-4-105481139
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
