How a Mathematician Shortened the Second World War by 2 Years

How A Mathematician Shortened the Second World War by 2 years

Alan Turing

At the end of WW1, a German engineer had designed an enciphering machine called 'The Enigma' which was used by the Nazi forces during the WW2. Enigma has been derived from the Latin word 'aenigma' which means riddle. Enigma is considered to be one of the most complicated enciphering machines. To understand how complex the Enigma is, let's compare it with the Caesar Cipher. The Caesar Cipher is a cipher in which each alphabet is shifted by a fixed number, therefore there are 25 possibilities. The Enigma had 159 quintillion possibilities that is 159 with 18 zeroes. Even if someone wanted to they couldn't go through each possibility. The Enigma had three rotors which changed positions after every input. So if a same alphabet was typed consecutively, the output was always different. The Germans were not using some discrete method of communication, they used simple radio transmissions. A child with a radio could intercept those messages. But the messages were enciphered using the Enigma. So the Allied forces had access to the messages but they were just a bunch a letters for them.

The cryptanalysis of Enigma started in 1932. While many countries were using linguists to crack the Enigma, the Polish government got Mathematicians for the job. A Polish mathematician used the idea of Permutation and Combination to decipher the messages. But this decryption was based on the weaknesses of the machine. In 1939, the chances of another war increased so the Polish included the French and the British in the decryption process. Alan Turing, a genius mathematician joined Dilly Knox, a famous cryptologist. The work of the team at Bletchely Park was based on using previously deciphered texts. They maintained a detailed record messages from various ships, units. The cryptanalysis was based on simple