Communications of the ACM
Meet the Computer Scientist Who Saved Bletchley Park
Sue Black also founded #techmums to empower women through technology.
Credit: Durham University
Tucked away in an estate in Buckinghamshire, England, is a 19th-century mansion. Named Bletchley Park, was the central home to Alan Turing's team of WWII codebreakers, the team of cryptographers who were able to decipher the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers.
The intelligence gained from these ciphers had a drastic effect on WWII's outcome: "My own conclusion is that it shortened the war by not less than two years and probably by four years," said the official historian of British Intelligence, Sir Harry Hinsley, in a 1993 lecture at Cambridge University.
Yet, by 1990, Bletchley Park faced demolition.
Thanks to a campaign led by Sue Black, currently a Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist in Durham University's Computer Science Department, the estate was saved and is now a protected historical site, museum, and monument dedicated to computing history. Black also went on to write the bestselling book, Saving Bletchley Park, about its rescue.
Black will be hosting a live Q&A with TNW Answers this Thursday, July 11. Questions may be submitted in advance.
From TNW
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