Peter Twinn
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Peter Frank George Twinn (9 January 1916 – 29 October 2004[1]) was a British mathematician, World War II codebreaker and entomologist.
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[edit] Education and codebreaking
Born in Streatham, South London, Twinn was the son of a senior General Post Office official.[1] After attending Manchester Grammar School and Dulwich College, he graduated in mathematics at Brasenose College, Oxford.[1] He won a scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies in Physics.[2]
Twinn joined GC&CS — Britain's codebreaking service — in early 1939, recruited after seeing an advertisement, working first in London before moving to Bletchley Park. He worked with Dilly Knox and Alan Turing on German Enigma ciphers. In early 1942, he became the head of the Abwehr Enigma section.
Twinn was the first British cryptographer to read a German military Enigma message, having obtained vital information from Polish cryptanalysts in July 1939. Twinn stated that, "It was a trifling exercise, but I repeat for the umpteenth time, no credit to me."
[edit] Post-war career
Twinn's carried on government work after the war in a number of departments, including, in the late 1960s, as Director of Hovercraft in the Ministry for Technology. Later he became Secretary of the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough. In the early 1970s, he was the second secretary of the Natural Environment Research Council.
Twinn became interested in entomology, gaining his doctorate from London University in the jumping mechanism of click beetles. He co-authored A Provisional Atlas of the Longhorn Beetle (Coleoptera Cerambycidae) (1999), a study of the distribution of a number of beetle species.
Twinn had an interest in music and played the clarinet and viola. Twinn married Rosamund Case, whom he had met at Bletchley Park through his interest in music, in 1944; they had a son and three daughters.
[edit] Publications
- Peter F. G. Twinn and P. T. Harding, "Provisional atlas of the longhorn beetles (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae) of Britain", Huntingdon: Biological Records Centre, 1999. ISBN 1-870393-43-0
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Dan Van Der Vat, "Obituary: Peter Twinn", The Guardian, 20 November 2004
- ^ "Peter Twinn - Obituary", The Times, 24 November 2004
