Jerzy Różycki

Early life and studies

He was born on 24 July 1909 in Olshana in the Kiev Governorate, into the family of the pharmacist Zygmunt Różycki and Wanda, née Benita. From 1917 he attended the Polish Borderlands Grammar School in Kiev; in 1918 the family fled the revolution to Poland, and he completed grammar school in Wyszków in 1926.¹

From 1927 to 1932 he studied mathematics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Poznań; he wrote his master's thesis under Professor Zdzisław Krygowski. In December 1937 he obtained a second diploma, in geography. According to the AW biography, he was one of three graduates of the secret cryptology course of January–May 1929, out of 23 selected students.^1,2

At the Cipher Bureau

While still a student he worked at the Poznań branch of the Cipher Bureau, and after it was closed on 1 September 1932 he held a civilian post in section BS-4 (German ciphers) in Warsaw. At the turn of 1932 and 1933 he helped to break Enigma and devised the clock method, used to determine the choice and setting of the rotors.¹

From 1 September 1936 he took part in the daily recovery of Enigma keys. The AW biography notes that his individual contribution is hard to establish today because the archive was destroyed in 1939. In July 1939 in Pyry he briefed French and British cryptologists on the team's achievements; they were then given Polish copies of Enigma built at the AVA works.¹

War and death

After September 1939 he made his way through Romania to France and worked in Team Z (signals intelligence) at the “P.C. Bruno” centre in Gretz-Armainvilliers near Paris. After the fall of France he was evacuated to Oran and Algiers, and in the Vichy zone he worked at the “P.C. Cadix” centre (Polish code name: Ekspozytura 300) at the Château des Fouzes near Uzès, under the name Julien Rouget.¹

From summer 1941 to early 1942 he worked in Algiers on German messages. He died on 9 January 1942, when the French passenger ship “Lamoricière”, on which he was returning from the Algiers outpost of the Cadix centre, sank near the Balearic Islands.^1,2

Memory and significance

His role was revealed in 1973 by General Gustave Bertrand. During his lifetime he received the Silver Cross of Merit (1938) and the Silver Cross of Merit with Swords (1945); in 1948 he was awarded the War Medal 1939–1945 (United Kingdom), and in 2000, posthumously, the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.¹

Together with Rejewski and Zygalski he is commemorated by the plaque at Bletchley Park, which credits the three Polish intelligence mathematicians with first breaking Enigma and with a contribution to the Allied victory.³