How did W. T. Tutte crack the Nazi Lorenz cipher?

W. T. Tutte was a British-Canadian mathematician and codebreaker whose fundamental breakthrough in cryptanalysis during the Second World War helped decrypt top-secret German Lorenz messages. His strategic intelligence contributions greatly aided the defeat of Nazi Germany. Following the war, Tutte made pioneering contributions to graph theory and matroid theory.

What we know

• W. T. Tutte was a British-Canadian codebreaker and mathematician born in 1917 and died in 2002. [1, 2]
• During World War II, Tutte made a fundamental advance in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, a high-level Nazi German cipher system. [2]
• The bulk decrypting of Lorenz-enciphered messages made possible by Tutte's breakthrough contributed greatly, and perhaps decisively, to the defeat of Nazi Germany. [2] · medium confidence
• Tutte performed foundational research in graph theory and matroid theory, expanding upon work initially developed by Hassler Whitney. [2]

Where to go next

• how it workedWhat was the Lorenz cipher used for?
• the bigger pictureHow did Hassler Whitney influence matroid theory?
• compared withWhat are De Bruijn sequences?
• whereWho are some notable Cambridge mathematicians?
• a case in pointWhat is topological graph theory?
• an unexpected connectionHow does graph theory link a WWII codebreaker to modern topological research?W. T. Tutte transformed graph theory into an active field from which later mathematicians like Neil Robertson developed specialized branches such as topological graph theory.

Sources

• [1]W. T. Tutte (Wikidata Q1391861) · CC0 1.0
• [2]W. T. Tutte · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [3]Neil Robertson (mathematician) · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [4]List of Cambridge mathematicians · CC BY-SA 4.0
• [5]Tatyana van Aardenne-Ehrenfest · CC BY-SA 4.0