Gordon Welchman

Gordon Welchman (1906 to 1985) was an English mathematician who played an important part in the codebreaking at Bletchley Park in the Second World War. Born at Fishponds near Bristol, the youngest of three children of a clergyman who became archdeacon of Bristol, he won a scholarship to Marlborough College, read the mathematical tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking first class honours in both parts, and became a fellow and later dean of Sidney Sussex College. His published mathematics concerned algebraic geometry, including a long paper on special scrolls and involutions on canonical curves in 1936, and he was writing a book entitled Introduction to Algebraic Geometry when war approached. Recruited by Alastair Denniston, he was one of the first mathematicians at Bletchley Park, proposed the organisation of work into huts, set up and ran Hut 6 against German Army and Air Force Enigma, and developed traffic analysis, which MacTutor calls his greatest contribution. He died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1985.