Oliver Strachey

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Oliver Strachey (fifth from left) with his nine siblings

Oliver Strachey CBE (born  November 3, 1874 in London , † May 14, 1960 ibid) was a British cryptanalyst . During the Second World War he contributed significantly to the breakage of the German rotor key machine Enigma and to the deciphering of Japanese encryption in the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) (German: "Staatliche Code- und Chiffrenschule") in Bletchley Park, England .

Life

Oliver was a son of General Sir Richard Strachey (1817-1908) and his second wife, Lady Jane Strachey (1840-1928). He was one of thirteen children of his parents, ten of whom reached adulthood. He attended school at Eton College and then at Balliol College , Oxford . His first daughter, Julia Strachey, comes from his first marriage to Ruby Julia Mayer in 1900. After their divorce, he married Rachel Conn "Ray" Costelloe (1887-1940) for the second time in 1911. Their relationship resulted in two children, Christopher and Barbara. Christopher Strachey (1916–1975) became a famous computer scientist and one of the founders of denotational semantics and a pioneer in the design of programming languages .

During the First World War , Oliver Strachey worked for MI1 , the military intelligence service of the British Ministry of Defense , whose tasks also included deciphering foreign encryption . After the war he joined the GC & CS , in September 1934 where he and his colleague Hugh Foss encrypting the Japanese naval attaché broke . During the Second World War he stayed in Bletchley Park (BP) and headed a special section there, which was nicknamed "ISOS". This abbreviation stood for "Intelligence Service Oliver Strachey" (German: Message Service Oliver Strachey). She dealt specifically with German agent encryption, especially defense (German military secret service), as well as the successfully practiced method of "turning around" German agents and using them as double agents within the framework of the Double Cross system.

In 1942 Denys Page was his successor in BP, after Strachey had been sent to Ottawa , Canada in December 1941 , where he became chief cryptologist of the so-called Examination Unit (German: investigation unit). It was a deliberately inconspicuous camouflage name chosen for the highly secret Canadian encryption station, the counterpart to the British BP. Its predecessor there was the well-known US cryptologist Herbert Yardley , author of the worldwide sensational bestseller The American Black Chamber (German: The American Black Chamber). Under US pressure, Yardley's position in Ottawa was not extended and Strachey took over his successor for a short time. In September 1942, however, he returned to BP.

Oliver Strachey died in 1960 at the age of 85 in his hometown in the London borough of Ealing .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Genealogy (English). Retrieved May 27, 2015.
  2. ^ Gordon Welchman: The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, p. 11. ISBN 0-947712-34-8
  3. ↑ Michael Smith: ENIGMA decrypted - The "Codebreakers" from Bletchley Park . Heyne, 2000, pp. 190ff. ISBN 3-453-17285-X
personal data
SURNAME Strachey, Oliver
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British cryptanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1960
Place of death London