Cracking the code on a productive, fun spring break

In March, Professors Neil Sigmon and Anthony Dove jetted, with a small group of students, across the Atlantic Ocean to England and France to visit and explore locales where some of the most significant and calculating moments in mathematical and human history have occurred.

The journey was part of a World War II-themed studying abroad cryptography course and math history course the Radford University professors of Mathematics and Statistics are teaching this spring semester. The trip, the third Sigmon has offered since 2018, focused partly on the work of Alan Turing and the British codebreakers who, at Buckinghamshire's Bletchley Park, cracked what German engineers thought was their unbreakable Enigma enciphering machine. The codebreakers' work proved vital to the Allies achieving victory in the war.

Bletchley Park, now a museum dedicated to the codebreakers' efforts, was one of the many sites students and their faculty travel companions visited.

"It was fun and interesting to see how and where they worked," said Lorelei Vogel, a freshman biology major from Poquoson, Virginia, who also is a Radford Honors College student.

To prepare for the trip, the class met twice a week this semester, Sigmon said, to learn about cryptology in general, how the German Enigma cipher worked, and to introduce the workings of the Turing Bombe, the mechanical device the codebreakers used to break the Enigma machine. Students who were more interested in studying math history in general met with Dove twice a week in his math for history class.

In addition to Bletchley Park, the students, Sigmon and Dove, visited the Winston Gallery and the Science Museum in London and the Maison Poincare mathematics museum in Paris, "where they," Dove said, "got an opportunity to learn about other important topics in math history."

Among the highlights of the journey, which occurred over the university's spring break, was a visit to Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, where, Sigmon explained, "the group learned about the exceptional sacrifices made by American and other Allied troops during the D-Day invasion of World War II."

The travelers also visited historical, art and cultural sites in London and Paris. "There was so many fun things to do, and I got a chance to see the Mona Lisa" said a smiling Lily Lambert, a junior criminal justice major from Hampton, Virginia.

The desired outcome for excursion this year as well as in the past, Sigmon explained, is that the trip "will make students truly appreciate the enormous work and contributions made by many past individuals to save lives and to make our current world a better place."

The experience was "an eye-opener," said Lambert, who works in Radford's Military Resource Center, "to see how many people put their lives at risk for the greater good."

For Vogel, the experience "gave me more awareness of how many people were involved with codebreaking and the effect they had on the outcome of the war."