World War II
On the outbreak of World War II, his tutor suggested that he join the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park.
Originally rejected in interview by Alan Turing for a message-codebreaking team, he was recruited in May 1941 by John Tiltman for the research section, which actually turned out to be the best choice. Tutte's work there allowed him, from basic mathematical analysis, to deduce the structure of the German Lorenz SZ 40/42 encryption machine (codenamed Tunny), that was used for high-level German Army communications. On 30 August 1941, the German high command sent a single message twice (a "depth"), allowing Tiltman to break the message code by deducing the obscuring key. Tiltman then handed it and some other Tunny keys to Tutte, who after writing out by hand the original teleprinter 5-character Baudot code, made an initial breakthrough by recognising a 41-character repeat. Over the following two months, Tutte and other members of the Research section worked out the complete logical structure of the cipher machine. This achievement was later described as "one of the greatest intellectual feats of World War II". Using his breakthrough, bulk Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher became possible.
Because of this work, Canada's Communications Security Establishment named an internal organisation aimed at promoting research into cryptology, the Tutte Institute for Mathematics and Computing (TIMC) in his honour in 2011.
Read more about this topic: W. T. Tutte
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