page_title: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
section_title: The Enigma Codebreakers
hierarchical_section_title: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań / People / The Enigma Codebreakers
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die drei polnischen Kryptoanalytiker Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki und Henryk Zygalski (ca. 1928-1932)English: The three polish codebreakers Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, and Henryk Zygalski (ca. 1928-1932)
context_page_description: The Adam Mickiewicz University is a research university in Poznań, Poland.
  It traces its origins to 1611, when under the Royal Charter granted by King Sigismund III Vasa, the Jesuit College became the first university in Poznań. The Poznań Society for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences which played an important role in leading Poznań to its reputation as a chief intellectual centre during the Age of Positivism and partitions of Poland, initiated founding of the university. The inauguration ceremony of the newly founded institution took place on 7 May 1919 that is 308 years after it was formally established by the Polish king and on 400th anniversary of the foundation of the Lubrański Academy which is considered its predecessor. Its original name was Piast University, which later in 1920 was renamed to University of Poznań. During World War II staff and students of the university opened an underground Polish University of the Western Lands. In 1955 University of Poznań adopted a new patron, the 19th-century Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz, and changed to its current name.
context_section_description: In the 1920s the German military began using a 3-rotor Enigma, whose security was increased in 1930 by the addition of a plugboard. The Polish Cipher Bureau sought to break it due to the threat that Poland faced from Germany, but its early attempts did not succeed. Near the beginning of 1929, the Polish Cipher Bureau realized that mathematicians may make good codebreakers; the bureau invited math students at University of Poznań to take a class on cryptology.
  After the class, the Bureau recruited some students to work part-time at a Bureau branch set up in Poznań for the students. The branch operated for some time. On 1 September 1932, 27-year-old Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski and two fellow Poznań University mathematics graduates, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Różycki, joined the Bureau full-time and moved to Warsaw. Their first task was to reconstruct a four-letter German naval cipher.
caption: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski, Polish mathematicians and cryptologists who worked at breaking the German Enigma ciphers before and during World War II
exif: {}