Futility Closet

In 1940, Germany was sending vital telegrams through neutral Sweden using a sophisticated cipher, and it fell to mathematician Arne Beurling to make sense of the secret messages. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the outcome, which has been called "one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of cryptography." We'll also learn about mudlarking and puzzle over a chicken-killing Dane. Intro: In 1836, three boys discovered 17 tiny coffins entombed near Edinburgh. On his 1965 album A Love Supreme, John Coltrane "plays" a poem on the saxophone. Sources for our feature on Arne Beurling: Bengt Beckman, Codebreakers: Arne Beurling and the Swedish Crypto Program During World War II, 1996. David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing, 1967. David Joyner, ed., Coding Theory and Cryptography, 2000. Bengt Beckman and Jonathan Beard, "Codebreakers: Arne Beurling and the Swedish Crypto Program During World War II," Intelligence and National Security 18:4 (January 2004)