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Marian Rejewski

Marian Rejewski (pronounced "MAH-ree-ahn re-YEV-skee") (August 26 1905February 13 1980) was a Polish mathematician and cryptographer.

Born in Bydgoszcz, Rejewski was a fellow of Poznan University and a member of Polish military intelligence. He studied statistics as an advanced student at Göttingen in Germany, and on his return joined the Biuro Szyfrow (Cypher Bureau of Polish Military Intelligence). Shortly thereafter, he was asked to examine the German Army's new machine cipher, Enigma, not long after it first came into use.

In doing so, he fundamentally advanced cryptanalysis. Previously, cryptanalytic methods exploited patterns and statistics in natural language writing; for example, letter frequency analysis. Rejewski, however, applied techniques from pure mathematics for the first time in his attack on the Enigma cypher. He was able to deduce the wirings of the rotors used by the German military Enigma, a feat that David Kahn describes as, "The solution was Rejewski's own stunning achievement, one that elevates him to the pantheon of the greatest cryptanalysts of all time."

Working with fellow cryptanalysts Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, he devised practical ways to break the cypher as it was then being used. The group designed machinery to help with the cryptanalytic work. The cyclometer was the first, followed by the bomba. A bomba could find the wheel order and start position by searching through a number of possibilities.

Details about the Polish breakthroughs were passed to the Allies (ie, British and French intelligence) in a meeting in Warsaw on 25 July 1939. The German Army had made Enigma changes (in September 1938) which substantially increased the difficulty of breaking messages, and as it became clear that war was imminent, and Polish resources would not be sufficient, the decision was made to look for help. With this assistance, the British (at Bletchley Park, and later the Americans) were able to break not only German Army Enigma traffic, but also German Air Force Enigma traffic, Nazi Party SD traffic, and (though with substantially greater difficulty) German Naval Enigma traffic.

Rejewski and many others of the Biuro staff were evacuated, with considerable difficulty, from Poland after the Germans attacked. Many of them, including Rejewski, ended up in France at Station PC Bruno, where they carried on their work with the Enigma traffic. When PC Bruno was finally shut down, some, including Rejewski, made it to Britain. He was not used for work on the Enigma for the rest of the War and was quite surprised to learn (when information about Bletchley Park and its cryptanalysts finally became public in the 1970s) of the importance of the work he had begun in the early 1930s.

After WWII he returned to Poland in 1946 to re-unite with his wife and two children. He worked in a factory in Poland until retirement, and was silent about his work during and before the War.

He wrote a book and two articles about his work during the breaking of Enigma, although the book was not published during his lifetime. Rejewski died in 1980 in Warsaw and is buried there in the Powazki Cemetery.

The Polish Mathematical Society has honoured him with a special medal.

An odd footnote to the story of his cryptographic contributions is that his role and importance in WWII cryptanalysis was so obscure that at least one best selling book (A Man Called Intrepid, by William Stevenson, 1976) not only didn't credit him with the work he did (it repeats the 'machine stolen from a transport truck' story, with variations) but identified him as Mademoiselle Marian Rewjeski.

Further reading

  • An Application of the Theory of Permutations in Breaking the Enigma Cipher http://frode.home.cern.ch/frode/crypto/rew80.pdf by Marian Rejewski
  • Enigma, by Wladyslaw Kozaczuk (about the history of the Enigma codebreaking effort in Poland)
  • Enigma ou la plus grande énigme de la guerre 1939–1945, Gustave Bertrand, Paris 1973. The first public disclosure of the breaking of the Enigma.
  • Machine Cryptography, by Cipher Devours and Louis Kruh (has an interview with Rejewski)
  • Battle of Wits, by Stephen Bodianski (the coverage of Enigma and the Polish/British/French breaks is accurate, and includes recent declassifications)
  • Enigma, by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (has material from Asch's daughter on his fate)
  • How the Polish Mathematicians Decrypted Enigma (in Polish), by Marian Rejewski, Annales Societatis Mathematicae Polonae, Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw, 1981




Last updated: 01-28-2005 03:22:13
Last updated: 02-28-2005 02:22:13