Talk:Marian Rejewski

message: I moved this sentence here for now:
:It would not be unreasonable to characterize Rejewski's early 1930s conceptual breakthrough as the single most valuable contribution by an individual to the winning of WWII by the Allies.
Certainly Rejewski's work was highly important, but I think assertions like this are extremely debatable. Of course, if this is a common evaluation of Rejewski's contribution, then it might be good to include a sentence like this, perhaps as a quote from a historian; otherwise I think we'd do well to leave it out. The David Kahn quote certainly helps demonstrate how well-regarded he is by cryptographers. — Matt 04:25, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Single most valuable contribution?

message: On the principle of parsimony, I regret William Friedman's aging neologism, "cryptanalysis."  Why did he need a new term, when there already was a well-established, elegant one, "cryptology" ("the study of secret writing," chiefly for the honorable purpose of "decrypting" or "breaking" others' ciphers or codes)?  The proper term then for the creation or use of ciphers or codes was "cryptography" ("secret writing," per se).  The two fields are, of course, two sides of the same coin:  one studies crypto-systems both to break those of an opponent, and to make one's own resistant to breaking.
Both Anglophones and Polonophones show a marked predilection for conceptual sloppiness.  The former like to lump ciphers and codes together as "codes," hence referring to the breaking of either as "codebreaking."  Polonophones, doubtless from esthetic considerations of their own, tend to do exactly the opposite:  they lump ciphers and codes together as "ciphers," and refer to decryption of either as "deciphering."  Such verbal sloppiness inevitably leads to conceptual confusion and should, where possible, be avoided.  There is, of course, the third term, "decryption," that may be applied to mixed situations.
Uninitiates, of course, tend to confuse "decipherment" with "decryption"—which is like equating, respectively, a legitimate bank withdrawal with a bank burglary.
But what I perhaps find most objectionable is the imputation of inelegance, stodginess or excessive punctiliousness to any word that contains the Greek root "-logy" or "-logist."  Logologist 07:53, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Some biases

message: I'm not sure that the extended Rejewski quote is the best way here. Short quotes are clearly very useful, but the job of an encyclopedia article is to summarise primary sources; here, we seem to be incorporating Rejewski's narrative to tell the story for us. I don't believe the events are so contentious that we can't synthesise our own summary of them. — Matt Crypto 10:23, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There has been an awful lot of confusion and speculation (for over 30 years!) about just what it was that Rejewski did.  I thought that hearing about it straight from the horse's mouth might help clear things up.  But perhaps someone could attempt a deft (and accurate) summary — and perhaps we might consider transferring the extended quotes to the WikiQuotes, for convenient reference?  Logologist 12:27, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, sounds like a good plan to me, and Rejewski's account does seem the obvious starting point for a summary of the events! — Matt Crypto 12:17, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Extended Rejewski quote