Shaun Wylie
| Shaun Wylie | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
17 January 1913 Oxford, England |
| Died | 2 October 2009 (aged 96) |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Cambridge |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Doctoral advisor | Solomon Lefschetz |
| Doctoral students |
Frank Adams Max Kelly Crispin Nash-Williams W. T. Tutte Christopher Zeeman |
Shaun Wylie (17 January 1913 – 2 October 2009) was a British mathematician and World War II codebreaker.
Wylie was born in Oxford, England, the fourth son of Sir Francis Wylie, later the first Warden of Rhodes House in Oxford. He was educated at the Dragon School (in Oxford) and then Winchester College. He won a scholarship to New College, Oxford where he studied mathematics and classics. In 1934, he went to study topology at Princeton University, obtaining a PhD in 1937 with Solomon Lefschetz as his supervisor. At Princeton he met fellow English mathematician Alan Turing. He became a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1938/1939.
During World War II, Turing had been recruited to work at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. Turing wrote to Wylie around December 1940, who was by then teaching at Wellington College, inviting him to work at Bletchley Park. He accepted, and arrived in February 1941. He joined Turing's section, Hut 8, which was working on solving the Enigma machine as used by the Kriegsmarine. He became head of the crib subsection, and allocated time on the bombe codebreaking machines.Hugh Alexander, successor to Turing as head of Hut 8, commented that "except for Turing, no-one made a bigger contribution to the success of Hut 8 than Shaun Wylie; he was astonishingly quick and resourceful and contributed to theory and practice in a number of different directions".
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