Henryk Zygalski
Zygalski’s sheets are an early example of an analytical aid tailored to a cipher’s operational weaknesses. They show that security analysis often advances through tools that encode an attack method.
Henryk Zygalski was a Polish mathematician and a member of the Cipher Bureau team that broke early German Enigma traffic. He is known for the perforated sheets used to identify Enigma settings from message indicators.
Analytical tools
The sheets translated a cryptanalytic deduction into a repeatable physical procedure. They were among the methods the Polish team developed before its knowledge of Enigma was shared with Allied partners in 1939.
In memoriam
Zygalski died in 1978 in England. His work remains a major contribution to the pre-war history of Enigma cryptanalysis.
Timeline
- 1908Born in Poznań, Poland.
- 1932Joins the Polish Cipher Bureau’s Enigma work.
- 1938Develops perforated sheets for Enigma analysis.
- 1939Polish Enigma knowledge is shared with Britain and France.
- 1946Settles in the United Kingdom after the war.
- 1978Dies in Liss, England.
Henryk Zygalski
- Type
- Person
- Era
- 1930s-1978
- Born
- 1908
- Died
- 1978
- Known for
- Zygalski sheets; Polish Cipher Bureau; Enigma cryptanalysis
- Tags
- cryptanalysis, enigma, polish-cipher-bureau, mathematics, codebreaking
Created by Joas A Santos · Something wrong or want it removed? Open an issue.