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View D-Day via real-time tweets of Enigma intercepts from Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park are planning to real-time tweet the D-Day landings on their 75th anniversary, via decrypted German Naval Enigma messages intercepted on site.

The Bletchley Park website explains:

To coincide with the 75th anniversary of D-Day, this Thursday 6 June 2019, Bletchley Park will be live tweeting minute by minute, in real time 75 years to the day, decrypted German Naval Enigma messages intercepted on site during the 6 June 1944 operation.

Starting from 23.58 GMT on 5 June, when German naval units were put on alert, to the following night by which time 156,000 Allied troops had landed by sea and air, the messages reveal how the Germans slowly realised that the Allied invasion in the West had begun. The Western Allies had landed in Normandy and not Calais as the Germans had been led to believe.

The 182 messages will be posted on the Bletchley Park twitter account @bletchleypark starting at 00.58 (GMT+1) and ending at 23.38 (GMT+1) – the times they would have originally been intercepted on 6 June 1944.

Update: If you are following the messages, it may be useful to know that Bletchley has produced a glossary of terms used.

Jerry Roberts has died

One of the last surviving Bletchley Park codebreakers, Jerry Roberts, has died aged 93. He was one of a small group of codebreakers who decrypted messages from the German High Command, including the German plans for the battle of Kursk. He initially worked on the Double Playfair hand cipher used by the German police, and later was part of the team working on the (more difficult than the well-known Enigma) Lorenz cipher, which used two sets of five cipher wheels.

Roberts had a successful career after the war in market research, and was a campaigner in later years for greater recognition for his fellow codebreakers – including William Tutte and Tommy Flowers, who had built the Colossus computer which cracked the codes, and Alan Turing, who also apparently did something.

Jerry Roberts obituary – The Guardian

Bletchley Park codebreaker Jerry Roberts dies, aged 93 – BBC News website

Jerry Roberts – Obituary – The Telegraph

Particularly mathematical New Years Honours 2013

The New Year Honours list 2013 was published today. Here we note those awarded in relation to mathematics. Are there any others I’ve missed? Please enlighten us in the comments.

  • Prof. Frank Kelly FRS, Professor of the Mathematics of Systems in the Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge and Chair of the Council for the Mathematical Sciences; CBE “for services to Mathematical Sciences”;
  • Terry Heard, teacher, author and co-founder of the UK Mathematics Trust; MBE “for services to the Teaching of Mathematics”;
  • Jenny Ramsden, teacher; MBE “for services to Further Education and to Mathematics Education through the UK Mathematics Trust”.

In addition, theoretical particle physicist Prof. Peter Higgs was appointed Companion of Honour “for services to Physics”, Professor Keith Burnett CBE FRS, physicist and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield was knighted “for services to Science and Higher Education” and Jeremy Buckle, event director of the Big Bang: UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair, was awarded the Medal of the Order of the British Empire “for services to Science and Engineering”.

A full list may be obtained from the Cabinet Office website.

Update (14:23): Thanks to Mr H in the comments for adding Jerry Roberts, who worked on deciphering Tunny (Lorenz) at Bletchley Park during World War II, awarded MBE “for services to the work of Bletchley Park and to codebreaking” (listed as Raymond Clarke Roberts, in the departmental list, rather than the general).

Update (02/01/2013 12:38):  Hetan Shah, Executive Director of the Royal Statistical Society, has tweeted that two RSS fellows not mentioned here are included on the list, that is Prof. Ian Diamond FBA FRSE, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, University of Aberdeen, knighted “for services to Social Science and Higher Education”, and Prof. David Hand, Senior Research Investigator, Imperial College London, awarded OBE “for services to Research and Innovation”.

Foreign Office gives Bletchley Park £480,000 and announces GCHQ apprenticeships

Having neglected the home of wartime codebreaking since it packed up and left with the end of hostilities, it looks like the Foreign Office is Turing over a new leaf – Foreign Secretary William Hague paid a visit to Bletchley Park on Thursday to make a couple of announcements that will please both amateur and more serious codebreakers.

The Bletchley Circle: codebreaking thriller on ITV1

ITV will show a new period drama called The Bletchley Circle from Thursday 6th September at 9pm on ITV1. According to the Milton Keynes Citizen, the story “follows the lives of four fictional women whose brilliant work at Bletchley Park during WWII helped to smash codes used by the German military.”

Susan, Millie, Lucy and Jean are back living normal lives, but behind Susan’s conventional exterior as a 1950s housewife and mother is a steely determination that really shouldn’t be under-estimated.
The unresolved murders of Jane Hart and Patricia Oakes bring Susan’s detective skills to the fore once more, and armed with handwritten charts of numbers, dates and times, she spots a pattern of behaviour that no-one else has seen…

The Milton Keynes Citizen quotes Laura Mackie, part of the ITV Drama Commissioning team, saying “The Bletchley Circle combines a vivid portrait of post-war Britain with a taut and original codebreaking thriller”. Here’s a very short trailer for the show:

Source: More drama at Bletchley Park! – Milton Keynes Citizen.

More info: The Bletchley Circle on ITV.com

Turing centenary Turing Test results

A Turing Test – the biggest ever staged, according to New Scientist – took place on 23rd June at Bletchley Park to mark the Turing centenary.

The test involved 150 conversations, 30 judges, 25 humans and five chatbots. The article points out that the Loebner Prize typically involves four judges and four chatbots. The contest was won by  ‘Eugene Goostman‘, “a chatbot with the personality of a 13-year-old boy” which fooled judges 29% of the time.

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