Jerzy Różycki

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jerzy Różycki (ca.1928)
The Saxon Palace (Polish: Pałac Saski ) in Warsaw housed the Polish cipher office Biuro Szyfrów in the 1930s .
Memorial plaque for Różycki and his colleagues on Warsaw's Piłsudski Square
Cenotaph for Jerzy Różycki in Poznan
Bank in Wyszków in memory of Jerzy Różycki

Audio file / audio sample Jerzy Różycki ? / i (*July 24, 1909in Oltschana nearKiev; †January 9, 1942in theMediterraneannear theBalearic Islands) was a Polishmathematicianandcryptologist.

Life

Różycki was born in what was then tsarist Russia near today's Ukrainian capital Kiev as the fourth and youngest child of Zygmunt Różycki and his wife Wanda, née. Benita, born. His father was a trained pharmacist and had studied at the University of Saint Petersburg . The young Jerzy attended a Polish school in Kiev and moved in 1918 into the after the First World War, newly resurgent avowed Poland . In 1926 he completed his schooling in the Polish city of Wyszków on the Bug .

From 1927 to 1932 he studied mathematics at the University of Poznan and graduated from there on February 19, 1932. He later studied geography , a course that he completed on December 13, 1937, also in Poznan.

In 1929, while still a student, Różycki, who spoke fluent German, took part as one of about twenty mathematics students in a secret course on cryptology organized by the Polish Biuro Szyfrów (BS) (German: "Chiffrenbüro"), the then based in the Saxon Palace (Pol. Pałac Saski ) in Warsaw had  (picture) . From September 1932 he worked there together with his former fellow students from Posen, Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski , on the deciphering of radio messages that the German military encrypted with their Enigma machine.

After his colleague Rejewski had reconstructed the military version of the German key machine in December 1932, Różycki worked with his friends Rejewski and Zygalski to develop sophisticated methods for breaking the Enigma keys, which the Germans changed daily. Jerzy Różycki invented the “ clock method ”, with the help of which it was sometimes possible to find out which of the three rollers of the Enigma was operated as the “fast” roller in the right position.

In 1939, the Cipher Bureau decided, in view of the increasing threat for Poland danger since 1932 successfully developed methodologies and tools with which it had managed to by the German Reichswehr and later by the army using the Enigma encrypted to news decipher , to to pass on the French and British allies. On July 26 and 27, 1939, the legendary secret meeting of French, British and Polish code breakers took place in the Kabaty forest of Pyry , just under 20 km south of Warsaw, at which they presented their Enigma replicas and their cryptanalytic machines to the astonished British and French and revealed their methodologies. With this boost, the British code breakers in Bletchley Park, England, were able to launch another attack on the German machine at the outbreak of war, which subsequently enabled them to decipher the encrypted German radio messages almost continuously.

Shortly afterwards, in September 1939, after the German attack on Poland , he had to leave his country, fled via Romania and initially found asylum in France, where he, together with many of his colleagues from the BS in " PC Bruno ", a secret intelligence service The Allied establishment near Paris, was able to continue its successful cryptanalytic work against the Enigma. With the German offensive against France in June 1940, he had to flee again from the advancing Wehrmacht and found a new location (camouflage name: "Cadix" ) near Uzès in the free southern zone of France .

Różycki drowned in the Mediterranean on January 9, 1942, when the French liner Lamoricière sank with him on board in a storm near the Balearic Islands. In his honor, a memorial plaque was placed  on Warsaw's Piłsudski Square (picture) . In 2007, for the 75th anniversary of the first deciphering of the Enigma , was in front of the Royal Palace in Poznan , the cryptographer Monument (Polish: Pomnik kryptologów ) unveiled  (picture) , which is dedicated to him and his two colleagues.

Jerzy Różycki left his wife Maria Barbara Mayka, whom he married in 1938, and their son Janusz Różycki , who was born on May 10, 1939. Janusz Różycki later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and won a silver medal at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 1964 together with the Polish fencing team .

literature

  • Chris Christensen: Review of IEEE Milestone Award to the Polish Cipher Bureau for `` The First Breaking of Enigma Code '' . Cryptologia . Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 39.2015,2, pp. 178-193. ISSN  0161-1194 .
  • Rudolf Kippenhahn : Encrypted messages. Secret writing , Enigma and chip card (= Rororo 60807 non-fiction book. Rororo science ). Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-60807-3 .
  • Władysław Kozaczuk & Jerzy Straszak: Enigma - How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code . Hyppocrene Books, New York 2004. ISBN 0-7818-0941-X
  • Marian Rejewski: An Application of the Theory of Permutations in Breaking the Enigma Cipher . Applicationes Mathematicae, 16 (4), 1980, pp. 543-559 PDF; 1.7 MB .
  • Gordon Welchman : From Polish Bomba to British Bombe: The Birth of Ultra . Intelligence and National Security, 1986.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ralph Erskine: The Poles Reveal their Secrets - Alastair Dennistons's Account of the July 1939 Meeting at Pyry . Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 30.2006,4, p. 294
  2. ↑ Marek Grajek : Monument in Memoriam of Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski Unveiled in Poznań , Cryptologia, 32: 2, 2008, pp. 101-103, doi : 10.1080 / 01611190801916634
personal data
SURNAME Różycki, Jerzy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish mathematician and cryptanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Olchana near Kiev
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1942
Place of death Mediterranean Sea in the Balearic Islands