Never Marry a Biker by Elizabeth M. Clarke

The Germans changed the settings on the Enigma machines every day and each branch of their military intelligence and civil services used different enigma settings. The machine's variable elements could be set in billions of combinations. The machine was an electro-mechanical device that relied on assorted rotating wheels and rotors to scramble plain text messages into jumbled cyphertext. They believed that the Enigma code was unbreakable. The Germans had successfully developed a device called an Enigma machine to encrypt their messages. Let us examine in a little more detail the background to the GCCS.

Records describe Clarke as congenial but shy, gentle and kind, non-aggressive and always subordinate to the men in her life qualities that would allow her to conform within the male dominated world of Bletchley Park. During the time that Joan Clarke was an undergraduate at Cambridge, Gordon Welchman had supervised her in Geometry during Part II and, aware of her mathematical ability, he was responsible for recruiting Clarke to join the 'Government Code and Cypher School' (GCCS ) at Bletchley Park. Gordon Welchman was one of the four top mathematicians recruited in 1939 to set up decoding operations at Bletchley Park. In 1939 Clarke was awarded the distinguished Philippa Fawcett Prize and in 1939- 1940 the Helen Gladstone Scholarship. In 1939 Clarke graduated, achieving a double first in Mathematics however this was merely the title of her degree, as Cambridge did not admit women to 'full membership of the body academic' until after the end of the Second World War. In 19 respectively, she achieved a First in Part I and Part II of the Mathematical Tripos (a three-year course leading to a BA degree ) and became a Wrangler. Joan was educated at Dulwich High School and in 1936 matriculated at Newnham College, Cambridge, to study Mathematics. She was their youngest child and had three elder brothers and one sister. Biography Joan Clarke's parents were William Kemp Lowther Clarke, a Clergyman, and Dorothy Elisabeth Clarke.

Never Marry a Biker by Elizabeth M. Clarke