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A mathematician, code-breaker, and computer scientist; although a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he was appointed a fellow and dean of Sidney Sussex College in 1929. On the outbreak of war he joined the Government’s code-breaking school at Bletchley Park and recruited a number of fellow Cambridge mathematicians to work with him. He first headed the Hut 6 team which was charged with deciphering German Army and Air Force codes. With Turing he went on to develop the Turing-Welchman Bombe that enabled German codes to be broken and from which modern computers developed.

He emigrated to the USA in 1948, and at MIT taught the first computer course in the United States. He then worked for Remington Rand, Ferranti, and the MITRE Corporation on tactical communications systems for the US military. He became a naturalised American citizen in 1962 and retired in 1971, but was retained as a consultant. His book, The Hut Six Story, was published in 1982. The National Security Agency disapproved of this and he lost his security clearance and, in consequence, his consultancy with MITRE. He was also forbidden from discussing either the book or his wartime work with the media. Welchman died in 1985 and his final conclusions and corrections to the story of wartime code-breaking were published posthumously in 1986 in a paper entitled ‘From Polish Bomba to British Bombe: the birth of Ultra’.

Wrens operating a Colossus machine. PD National Archives FO850/234