William Gordon Welchman was born on
June 15, 1906 in Bristol and was a well-known mathematician and
university professor who served in the Bletchley Park during the
Second World War.
Third of three brothers, he was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College before specializing at the famous Sidney Sussex College.
One of his ideas (the Diagonal Table) led to the decryption of the German code in terms of hours rather than days.
After moving to the United States in 1948, he held the first IT course at MIT and became a citizen of that country in 1962.
In 1937 he married Katharine Hodgson, a professional musician, who gave him three children, a second marriage saw him linked to the painter Fannie Hillsmith and a third to Elisabeth Huber.
The publication of the famous book "Hut 6" led him to the withdrawal of the security clearance and to many other administrative problems that saw a late rehabilitation of the English scientist.
Welchman, who like other Bletchley Park scientists was a bridge lover, demonstrating how the game helped training the cryptographers' minds out, he died in Newburyport on October 8, 1985. .