Waterloo Prof Lowkey a GOAT, Gets Stamp for Cracking Nazi Codes 💯

The Deets

Okay, so boom. There was this prof, William Tutte, right? Total genius. He used to teach at the University of Waterloo. But before that, this man was doing the most at Bletchley Park in the UK. Like, straight-up saving the world type beat.

The Royal Mail in Great Britain is dropping a whole stamp series for the 80th anniversary of V.E. Day (Victory in Europe Day), marking the end of World War II. And guess who made the cut? Our guy, Tutte! He's one of ten people getting their face on a stamp. That's major clout.

So, what did he even DO? During the war, the man was a codebreaker. He was all about cracking the TUNNY code used in the Germans’ Lorenz machine. This machine was how the Nazis sent their top-secret messages. Tutte cooked up a statistical method that helped Bletchley Park decode these messages faster. Without his genius, who knows how long the war could've lasted?

After the war, he dipped to Canada and became a prof, first at U of T and then Waterloo. But get this: his code-breaking gig was top secret until the 90s! Can you imagine keeping that on the DL for so long? Now, everyone knows. And he's getting a whole stamp with him standing in front of the Lorenz cipher machine. Mad respect!