TWO OF THE MOST BRILLIANT AND ACCOMPLISHED FEMALE MINDS OF THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURIES MEET AT BLETCHLEY PARK

This remarkable event took place when Dr Fran Allen, winner of what is regarded as the Nobel Prize for Computing, made a pilgrimage from the US to Bletchley Park, the birthplace of modern computing and the Information Age and WW2 home of the intellectual codebreaking warriors including Alan Turing and Mavis Batey.  Accompanying Dr Allen were Dr Phyllis Starkey, MP for Milton Keynes South West, and an expert in the field of biochemistry who once headed a group at the University of Oxford researching problems of pregnancy and subsequently worked as an expert in science and technology policy and bioethics for the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and Dr Sue Black, Founder of the British Computer Society BCS Women Group that provides networking opportunities and support for all women working in IT around the world.  Dr Black is also Head of the Department of Information and Software Systems at the University of Westminster and the person who initiated the letter to The Times on 24 July 2008 calling for urgent action in the restoration of Bletchley Park, signed by 97 scientists.

87 year old Mavis Batey, Bletchley Park Codebreaker from 1940 to 1945, was a key figure in the codebreaking intelligence which led to the Allied victory at the Battle of Cape Matapan; the biggest naval success since the Battle of Trafalgar.

Highlights of Dr Fran Allen’s visit to Bletchley Park included demonstrations of the rebuilds of the Bombe and Colossus, the world’s first electronic, semi-programmable computer, and an insight into the secrets of Ultra and Enigma by Mavis and her husband Keith Batey, a mathematician and also a WW2 Bletchley Park Codebreaker.

Dr Brian Oakley, former President of the British Computer Society and now a Bletchley Park historian and tour guide, hosted the visit, heralding the event as “a monumental celebration of the last seventy years of intellectual triumphs of women in the fields of mathematics, codebreaking, science and computing and the colossal contribution of their achievements to technology and the modern age.”

After her tour of Bletchley Park Dr Fran Allen spoke passionately of her experience, “Bletchley Park is a unique place where some of the most brilliant and focused minds of their generation lived and worked on one problem: breaking German codes during WWII. Visiting Bletchley Park is to feel the urgency, the joy of success and the despair of failure, to learn how the codebreaking worked and how it influenced the outcome of the war”.

Dr Fran Allen also paid tribute to the work of the Bletchley Park Trust in its on-going campaign to transform Bletchley Park into a world-class heritage and educational centre, saying, “It was an enormous privilege for me today to visit the place where the most phenomenal technological advances were made to achieve the astonishing aim of foreshortening the war by two years.  It would be a global tragedy if these buildings were allowed to crumble away and I have great admiration for the Trust’s work in its fight to obtain the funding needed in order to restore and preserve this crucial piece of history for future generations. ”.