Shaun Wylie, a British mathematician who was critical to breaking German codes during World War II, died Oct. 22, 2009. He was 96.

Wylie studied mathematics and classics at Oxford, and then earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton in 1937. Here he met a fellow Englishman, Alan Turing *38. Turing was ranked as Princeton’s second-most-influential alumnus (after James Madison 1771 and ahead of Woodrow Wilson 1879), in PAW’s Jan. 23, 2008, article “Princeton’s Most Influential Alumni,” for originating in 1936 the concept of the computer.

In 1940, Turing invited Wylie to work with him at Bletchley Park, Britain’s center for code-breaking. Here Wylie was a leader in solving the German Navy’s encryption device, Enigma, and also in deciphering the German teleprinter cipher machine, Tunny, which relayed all messages from Hitler to his front-line generals.

After the war, Wylie was a fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. When Watson and Crick were working on the design of DNA as a double helix, they sought Wylie’s topological opinion. In 1958, Wylie became chief mathematician at GCHQ, the British signals-intelligence headquarters. He retired in 1973 and was elected an honorary fellow of Trinity Hall in 1980.

Wylie was predeceased by his wife, Odette, and their eldest son. He is survived by a daughter and two sons.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.

Graduate Class of 1937