Joan Clarke
English cryptanalyst
Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray (née Clarke; 24 June 1917 – 4 September 1996) was an English cryptanalyst and numismatist who worked as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Although she did not personally seek the spotlight, her role in the Enigma project that decrypted the German secret communications earned her awards and citations, such as appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), in 1946.
Early life and education
Joan Elisabeth Lowther Clarke was born on 24 June 1917 in West Norwood, London, England. She was the youngest child of Dorothy Elisabeth Clarke (née Fulford) and the London clergyman Revd. William Kemp Lowther Clarke. She had three brothers and one sister.
Clarke attended Dulwich High School for Girls in south London and won a scholarship in 1936, to attend Newnham College, Cambridge. Her work in an undergraduate geometry class at Cambridge drew the attention of mathematician Gordon Welchman, who became her academic supervisor.
Clarke gained a double first degree in mathematics and was a Wrangler. She won the Philippa Fawcett prize and was awarded the Helen Gladstone scholarship for a further year of study.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joan Clarke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.