.gif)
Enigma (2001 film)
Encyclopedia
Enigma is a 2001
British film about the Enigma
codebreakers of Bletchley Park
in World War II
. The film, directed by Michael Apted
, stars Dougray Scott
and Kate Winslet
. The film's screenplay was by Tom Stoppard
, based on the novel Enigma
by Robert Harris
. This was the final film to be scored by John Barry
.
In 1943 amid the largest convoy deployment from the US to Britain, cryptanalyst
Tom Jericho returns to Bletchley Park to help find the code to the U-Boats' Enigma communications. On finding a cypher containing highly classified information, hidden by a former lover who has gone missing, he attempts to solve the code while working on cracking the German U-Boat code against a background of subterfuge, spies and the Katyn massacre
.
The film was co-produced by Mick Jagger
, who provided funding for the film, as well as access to his own Enigma machine. It was shot in England, Scotland and the Netherlands. Critical reviews were largely positive, although there was criticism of the largely fictional storyline which does not mention the real codebreaker Alan Turing
, nor give due credit to the Polish cryptanalysis foundation on which subsequent British codebreaking was dependent for its successes.
at Bletchley Park
, Buckinghamshire
, England
, have a problem: the Nazi
U-boat
s have increased the security of key-changing of their Enigma machine
cipher
s, leading to a blackout in the flow of naval vital signals intelligence. This could spell disaster in the critical Battle of the Atlantic
, on whose outcome Britain's survival depends. The British cryptanalysts have cracked the "shark" cipher once before, and they need to do it again in order to keep track of U-boat locations and steer shipping convoys out of their way.
The plot follows the fictional character of the brilliant but maverick working class
mathematician
Tom Jericho (played by Dougray Scott
). He is returned to Bletchley Park from Cambridge
to assist with the crisis after recovering from a nervous breakdown brought on by overwork combined with an unhappy love affair with Claire Romilly (Saffron Burrows
), who works at Bletchley. Jericho immediately tries to see Claire again and finds that she mysteriously disappeared a few days earlier. He enlists the help of Claire's blue stocking housemate Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet
), also working at Bletchley, to follow the trail of clues and learn what has happened to Claire.
Mr. Jericho and Miss Wallace, as they formally address each other, repeatedly break the rules of the Bletchley Park establishment and the law as their hunt for Claire gets more intense, especially after they discover that she has stolen and hidden some messages which have not been decyphered.
Jericho is closely watched by a suave MI5
agent Wigram (Jeremy Northam
), who plays cat and mouse
with him throughout the film. But Jericho's eccentricities are tolerated at the Park, despite his transgressions, because of the brilliant plan he devises for uncovering the new code key. The plan may unfortunately mean sacrificing at least one Allied convoy to the U-boats.
The film follows events as signals intelligence see a convoy spotted and then hunted down by the U-boats, but this gives enough information for the new key to be analysed using electro mechanical Bombe
devices.
Tom and Hester's highly unofficial research uncovers a British government plot to bury the intelligence information of the Katyn massacre
for fear it might weaken American willingness to remain in the war on the same side as Joseph Stalin
.
This in turn leads to their suspicion that a Polish
cryptanalyst, Jozef 'Puck' Pukowski (Nikolaj Coster Waldau
) working at the Park may have been so incensed by his own learning of the massacre – which claimed the life of his brother – that he is prepared to betray Bletchley's secrets to the Nazis in order to take revenge on Stalin.
Jericho trails Puck to Scotland
and catches up with him just as he is about to be taken on board a U-boat. But Wigram and the police have been trailing them both and the U-boat is bombed and sunk.
A short scene after the War sees Jericho and Hester married with a child on the way. It is implied that Claire, who was revealed to be an agent planted by Wigram, is still missing and unaccounted for. She is, however, spotted by Jericho as he waits on some steps for Hester (though it was possible that this was a hallucination, as she was wearing an evening dress
and fur
stole
).
. Other locations include the Great Central Railway
Loughborough
and Tigh Beg Croft, Oban. Interiors were filmed at Elstree Film Studios.
The film was part-financed by Mick Jagger
of The Rolling Stones
. Jagger makes a cameo appearance as an RAF officer at a dance. He also lent the film's design department a four-rotor Enigma encoding machine he owned to ensure the historical accuracy of one of the props. The festivities around the London premiere of the film are shown in the 2001 documentary Being Mick
.
The film - and by association the book - have attracted criticism for their portrayal of the Polish
role in Enigma
decryption. Critics argue that in the film the fictitious traitor turns out to be Polish whilst only slight mention is made of the contributions of pre-war Polish
Cipher Bureau
cryptologists to Allied Enigma decryption efforts, while historically, the only known traitor active at Bletchley Park was British spy John Cairncross
who passed crucial secrets to the Soviet Union
.
The film has also been criticized for substituting the character of Jericho for Alan Turing
. Jericho, who is clearly a stand-in for Turing, drops references to the Entscheidungsproblem
and Turing machines, but is heterosexual and provides the love interest to the film (Turing was homosexual and prosecuted as such under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, he 'accepted' chemical castration via estrogen
hormone injections and suffered further ostracism until his possible suicide in 1954).
The so-called "Greatest Convoy Battle" took place between the 7th and 11th of March 1943 (10 convoys and 38 German submarines in Atlantic), although in the movie it seems to be represented as occurring at the end of April 1943.
2001 in film
The year 2001 in film involved some significant events, including the first of the Harry Potter series and also the first of The Lord of the Rings trilogy...
British film about the Enigma
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
codebreakers of Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The film, directed by Michael Apted
Michael Apted
Michael David Apted, CMG is an English director, producer, writer and actor. He is one of the most prolific British film directors of his generation but is best known for his work on the Up Series of documentaries and the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.On 29 June 2003 he was elected...
, stars Dougray Scott
Dougray Scott
-Early life:The son of Elma, a nurse, and Alan Scott, an actor and salesperson, Stephen Dougray Scott was born in Glenrothes, Fife and attended Auchmuty High School...
and Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
. The film's screenplay was by Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
, based on the novel Enigma
Enigma (novel)
Enigma is a novel by Robert Harris about Tom Jericho, a young mathematician trying to break the Germans' "Enigma" ciphers during World War II. It was adapted to film in 2001...
by Robert Harris
Robert Harris (novelist)
Robert Dennis Harris is an English novelist. He is a former journalist and BBC television reporter.-Early life:Born in Nottingham, Harris spent his childhood in a small rented house on a Nottingham council estate. His ambition to become a writer arose at an early age, from visits to the local...
. This was the final film to be scored by John Barry
John Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
.
In 1943 amid the largest convoy deployment from the US to Britain, cryptanalyst
Cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information that is normally required to do so. Typically, this involves knowing how the system works and finding a secret key...
Tom Jericho returns to Bletchley Park to help find the code to the U-Boats' Enigma communications. On finding a cypher containing highly classified information, hidden by a former lover who has gone missing, he attempts to solve the code while working on cracking the German U-Boat code against a background of subterfuge, spies and the Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...
.
The film was co-produced by Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
, who provided funding for the film, as well as access to his own Enigma machine. It was shot in England, Scotland and the Netherlands. Critical reviews were largely positive, although there was criticism of the largely fictional storyline which does not mention the real codebreaker Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
, nor give due credit to the Polish cryptanalysis foundation on which subsequent British codebreaking was dependent for its successes.
Plot
The story takes place in March 1943 with the Second World War at its height and is loosely based on actual events. The cryptanalystsCryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information that is normally required to do so. Typically, this involves knowing how the system works and finding a secret key...
at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
, Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, have a problem: the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
s have increased the security of key-changing of their Enigma machine
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
cipher
Cipher
In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is encipherment. In non-technical usage, a “cipher” is the same thing as a “code”; however, the concepts...
s, leading to a blackout in the flow of naval vital signals intelligence. This could spell disaster in the critical Battle of the Atlantic
Second Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, running from 1939 to the defeat of Germany in 1945. At its core was the Allied naval blockade of Germany, announced the day after the declaration of war, and Germany's subsequent counter-blockade. It was at its...
, on whose outcome Britain's survival depends. The British cryptanalysts have cracked the "shark" cipher once before, and they need to do it again in order to keep track of U-boat locations and steer shipping convoys out of their way.
The plot follows the fictional character of the brilliant but maverick working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
Tom Jericho (played by Dougray Scott
Dougray Scott
-Early life:The son of Elma, a nurse, and Alan Scott, an actor and salesperson, Stephen Dougray Scott was born in Glenrothes, Fife and attended Auchmuty High School...
). He is returned to Bletchley Park from Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
to assist with the crisis after recovering from a nervous breakdown brought on by overwork combined with an unhappy love affair with Claire Romilly (Saffron Burrows
Saffron Burrows
Saffron Dominique Burrows is an English actress and former fashion model, who starred as Det. Serena Stevens on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Lorraine Weller on Boston Legal.-Early life:...
), who works at Bletchley. Jericho immediately tries to see Claire again and finds that she mysteriously disappeared a few days earlier. He enlists the help of Claire's blue stocking housemate Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
), also working at Bletchley, to follow the trail of clues and learn what has happened to Claire.
Mr. Jericho and Miss Wallace, as they formally address each other, repeatedly break the rules of the Bletchley Park establishment and the law as their hunt for Claire gets more intense, especially after they discover that she has stolen and hidden some messages which have not been decyphered.
Jericho is closely watched by a suave MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
agent Wigram (Jeremy Northam
Jeremy Northam
Jeremy Philip Northam is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Ivor Novello in the 2001 film Gosford Park, as Dean Martin in the 2002 television movie Martin and Lewis, and as Thomas More on the Showtime series The Tudors...
), who plays cat and mouse
Cat and mouse
Cat and mouse, often expressed as cat-and-mouse game, is an English-language idiom dating back to 1675 that means "a contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures, and repeated escapes." The "cat" is unable to secure a definitive victory over the "mouse", who despite not being able to...
with him throughout the film. But Jericho's eccentricities are tolerated at the Park, despite his transgressions, because of the brilliant plan he devises for uncovering the new code key. The plan may unfortunately mean sacrificing at least one Allied convoy to the U-boats.
The film follows events as signals intelligence see a convoy spotted and then hunted down by the U-boats, but this gives enough information for the new key to be analysed using electro mechanical Bombe
Bombe
The bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...
devices.
Tom and Hester's highly unofficial research uncovers a British government plot to bury the intelligence information of the Katyn massacre
Katyn massacre
The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass execution of Polish nationals carried out by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs , the Soviet secret police, in April and May 1940. The massacre was prompted by Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all members of...
for fear it might weaken American willingness to remain in the war on the same side as Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
.
This in turn leads to their suspicion that a Polish
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
cryptanalyst, Jozef 'Puck' Pukowski (Nikolaj Coster Waldau
Nikolaj Coster Waldau
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is a Danish actor. He received his education at Statens Teaterskole in Copenhagen in 1993, and his breakthrough in Danish film came with the 1994 hit Nattevagten . He played Detective John Amsterdam on the Fox television series New Amsterdam...
) working at the Park may have been so incensed by his own learning of the massacre – which claimed the life of his brother – that he is prepared to betray Bletchley's secrets to the Nazis in order to take revenge on Stalin.
Jericho trails Puck to Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and catches up with him just as he is about to be taken on board a U-boat. But Wigram and the police have been trailing them both and the U-boat is bombed and sunk.
A short scene after the War sees Jericho and Hester married with a child on the way. It is implied that Claire, who was revealed to be an agent planted by Wigram, is still missing and unaccounted for. She is, however, spotted by Jericho as he waits on some steps for Hester (though it was possible that this was a hallucination, as she was wearing an evening dress
Evening dress
Evening dress may refer to:* White tie, the most formal civilian dress code in Western fashion* Black tie, a semi-formal dress code for evening events and social functions in Western fashion...
and fur
Fur
Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
stole
Stole (shawl)
A stole is a lady's shawl, especially a formal shawl of expensive fabric used around the shoulders over a party dress or ballgown.A stole is typically narrower than a shawl, and of simpler construction than a cape; being a length of a quality material, wrapped and carried about the shoulders or arms...
).
Main cast
- Dougray ScottDougray Scott-Early life:The son of Elma, a nurse, and Alan Scott, an actor and salesperson, Stephen Dougray Scott was born in Glenrothes, Fife and attended Auchmuty High School...
- Tom Jericho - Kate WinsletKate WinsletKate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
- Hester Wallace - Saffron BurrowsSaffron BurrowsSaffron Dominique Burrows is an English actress and former fashion model, who starred as Det. Serena Stevens on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Lorraine Weller on Boston Legal.-Early life:...
- Claire Romilly - Jeremy NorthamJeremy NorthamJeremy Philip Northam is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Ivor Novello in the 2001 film Gosford Park, as Dean Martin in the 2002 television movie Martin and Lewis, and as Thomas More on the Showtime series The Tudors...
- Mr. Wigram - Nikolaj Coster WaldauNikolaj Coster WaldauNikolaj Coster-Waldau is a Danish actor. He received his education at Statens Teaterskole in Copenhagen in 1993, and his breakthrough in Danish film came with the 1994 hit Nattevagten . He played Detective John Amsterdam on the Fox television series New Amsterdam...
- Jozef 'Puck' Pukowski - Tom HollanderTom HollanderThomas Anthony "Tom" Hollander is a British actor who has appeared in productions such as Enigma, Gosford Park, Cambridge Spies, Pride and Prejudice, Pirates of the Caribbean, In the Loop, Valkyrie and Hanna.-Early life:Tom Hollander was born in Bristol and raised in Oxford, Oxfordshire, the son...
- Logie - Donald SumpterDonald SumpterDonald Sumpter is a British actor. He has appeared in film and television since the mid 1960s.-Life and work:One of his early television appearances was the 1968 Doctor Who serial The Wheel in Space with Patrick Troughton as the Doctor. He appeared in Doctor Who again in the 1972 serial The Sea...
- Leveret - Matthew MacfadyenMatthew MacfadyenDavid Matthew Macfadyen is an English actor, known for his role as MI5 intelligence officer Tom Quinn in the BBC television drama series Spooks and for starring as Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.In June, 2010 Macfadyen won a British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting...
- Cave - Corin RedgraveCorin RedgraveCorin William Redgrave was an English actor and political activist.-Early life:Redgrave was born in Marylebone, London, the only son and middle child of actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson...
- Admiral Trowbridge - Nicholas RoweNicholas Rowe (actor)Nicholas James Sebastian Rowe is a Scottish actor.-Biography:Rowe was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of English parents Alison, a singer, and Andrew Rowe, a Member of Parliament and editor. He attended Eton and received a BA in Hispanic Studies from Bristol University...
- Villiers - Edward HardwickeEdward HardwickeEdward Hardwicke , sometimes credited as Edward Hardwick, was an English actor.-Early life and career:...
- Heaviside
Production and premiere
The film was shot on location in England and Scotland with Bletchley Park mansion substituted by Chicheley HallChicheley Hall
Chicheley Hall, in Chicheley, Buckinghamshire, was built in the first quarter of the 18th century in the Baroque style. It is one of the finest country houses in Buckinghamshire, described by Marcus Binney in The Times as "one of the dozen finest and loveliest English country houses that will...
. Other locations include the Great Central Railway
Great Central Railway
The Great Central Railway was a railway company in England which came into being when the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway changed its name in 1897 in anticipation of the opening in 1899 of its London Extension . On 1 January 1923, it was grouped into the London and North Eastern...
Loughborough
Loughborough
Loughborough is a town within the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England. It is the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and is home to Loughborough University...
and Tigh Beg Croft, Oban. Interiors were filmed at Elstree Film Studios.
The film was part-financed by Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
of The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
. Jagger makes a cameo appearance as an RAF officer at a dance. He also lent the film's design department a four-rotor Enigma encoding machine he owned to ensure the historical accuracy of one of the props. The festivities around the London premiere of the film are shown in the 2001 documentary Being Mick
Being Mick
Being Mick is a 2001 television film which chronicles the life of Mick Jagger for one year. Much of the film was filmed by Mick using a handheld camera. The film documents his recording of the Goddess in the Doorway album, as well as daily life including his family and friends...
.
Criticism
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
role in Enigma
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
decryption. Critics argue that in the film the fictitious traitor turns out to be Polish whilst only slight mention is made of the contributions of pre-war Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
Cipher Bureau
Biuro Szyfrów
The Biuro Szyfrów was the interwar Polish General Staff's agency charged with both cryptography and cryptology ....
cryptologists to Allied Enigma decryption efforts, while historically, the only known traitor active at Bletchley Park was British spy John Cairncross
John Cairncross
John Cairncross was a British intelligence officer during World War II, who passed secrets to the Soviet Union...
who passed crucial secrets to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
The film has also been criticized for substituting the character of Jericho for Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
. Jericho, who is clearly a stand-in for Turing, drops references to the Entscheidungsproblem
Entscheidungsproblem
In mathematics, the is a challenge posed by David Hilbert in 1928. The asks for an algorithm that will take as input a description of a formal language and a mathematical statement in the language and produce as output either "True" or "False" according to whether the statement is true or false...
and Turing machines, but is heterosexual and provides the love interest to the film (Turing was homosexual and prosecuted as such under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, he 'accepted' chemical castration via estrogen
Estrogen
Estrogens , oestrogens , or œstrogens, are a group of compounds named for their importance in the estrous cycle of humans and other animals. They are the primary female sex hormones. Natural estrogens are steroid hormones, while some synthetic ones are non-steroidal...
hormone injections and suffered further ostracism until his possible suicide in 1954).
The so-called "Greatest Convoy Battle" took place between the 7th and 11th of March 1943 (10 convoys and 38 German submarines in Atlantic), although in the movie it seems to be represented as occurring at the end of April 1943.
See also
- U-571U-571 (film)U-571 is a 2000 film directed by Jonathan Mostow, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, Thomas Kretschmann, Jon Bon Jovi, Jack Noseworthy, Will Estes, and Tom Guiry...
(2000) - Cryptanalysis of the EnigmaCryptanalysis of the EnigmaCryptanalysis of the Enigma enabled the western Allies in World War II to read substantial amounts of secret Morse-coded radio communications of the Axis powers that had been enciphered using Enigma machines. This yielded military intelligence which, along with that from other decrypted Axis radio...
- Enigma machineEnigma machineAn Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
- UltraUltraUltra was the designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by "breaking" high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. "Ultra" eventually became the standard...