The

The from the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.

Welcome to the February 202323 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast,

a new look at Newman. The breaking of the German Lorenz cipher system was one of Bletchley Park's most complex technical achievements. This work is often associated with

Tommy Flowers from the GPO. However, Flowers work and the wider mechanisation of the breaking of Lorenz

was overseen by a Cambridge mathematician who came to Bletchley Park only reluctantly in 1942,

Professor Max Newman. To mark the 80th anniversary of the opening of Bletchley Park's Newmanry in February

1943, in this It Happened Here episode, we examined the story of Newman and his crucial

role in the breaking of Lorenz. We're joined by Bletchley Park's research historian, Dr David Kenyon,

to tell us more. Special thanks to Dr. Ben Thompson for voicing our archival documents.

This is Bletchley Park.

It happened here.

David, before we look at his work, shall we look at Newman the man?

Can you give us a bit of biographical detail about him?

I certainly can.

As you explained in your introduction, Max Newman was a Cambridge mathematician who worked here at Bletchley Park. But to start the story at the beginning, Max Newman was actually born

Maxwell Neumann in February 1897 in Chelsea in London. His name was Neumann because his father was a German immigrant.

Herman Neumann had come from Bromberg, which is in East Germany, now Poland, in fact. And he'd moved to

the UK when Herman himself was a teenager. And so Max was brought up by a German father and an Irish mother,

his mother, Sarah, had married Herman in 1896. And they lived in West London in Chelsea.

Herman was a company secretary and Sarah was a school teacher. So reasonably comfortable middle class

family. They actually lived at

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