Jerzy Witold RÃ³à ¼ycki (; 24 July 1909 â 9 January 1942) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma-machine ciphers before and during World War II.
RÃ³à ¼ycki was born in what is now Ukraine, the fourth and youngest child of Zygmunt RÃ³à ¼ycki, a pharmacist and graduate of Saint Petersburg University, and Wanda, née Benita. He attended a Polish school in Kyiv before moving with his family to Poland in 1918. In 1926 he completed secondary school at Wyszków on eastern Poland's Bug River.
RÃ³à ¼ycki studied mathematics from 1927 to 1932 in western Poland, at Poznaà  University's Mathematics Institute, graduating with a master's degree on February 19, 1932. He would later earn a second master's degree from Poznaà  University, in geography, on December 13, 1937.
In 1929, while still a student, RÃ³à ¼ycki, proficient in German, was one of twenty-odd Poznaà  University mathematics students who accepted an invitation to attend a secret cryptology course organized at a nearby military installation by the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, headquartered in Warsaw.
From September 1932 RÃ³à ¼ycki served as a civilian cryptologist with the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, housed till 1937 in Warsaw's Saxon Palace. He worked there together with fellow Poznaà  University mathematics alumni and Cipher Bureau cryptology-course graduates Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski.
After Rejewski had reconstructed the German military Enigma machine in December 1932, RÃ³à ¼ycki and Zygalski likewise worked at ongoing development of methods and equipment to exploit Enigma decryption as a source of intelligence. RÃ³à ¼ycki invented the "clock" method, which sometimes made it possible to determine which of the machine's rotors was at the far right, that is, in the position where the rotor always revolved at every depression of a key.
On 9 January 1942 RÃ³à ¼ycki perished in the Mediterranean Sea while returning to the Cadix center, near Uzès in Vichy France, from a stint at Cadix's branch office at the Château Couba on the outskirts of Algiers. His passenger ship, the SS Lamoricière, sank in unclear circumstances near the Balearic Islands. Fellow victims of the disaster, among the 222 passengers killed, included Piotr Smoleà Âski and Captain Jan Gralià Âski, of the prewar Polish Cipher Bureau's Russian section, and a French officer accompanying the three Poles, Captain François Lane.
RÃ³à ¼ycki has a cenotaph (symbolic grave) in the National Pantheon at the Saints Peter and Paul Church in Kraków, Poland.
In 1938, aged 29, RÃ³à ¼ycki married Maria Barbara Mayka. Their son, Janusz RÃ³à ¼ycki, born May 10, 1939, completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and went on to be a member of the Polish fencing team that won a silver medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.
In 1980 RÃ³à ¼ycki and his two mathematician colleagues were among the heroes of Sekret Enigmy (The Enigma Secret), a Polish thriller film about their solution of the German Enigma cipher. Late 1980 also saw a similarly-themed Polish TV series, Tajemnice Enigmy (The Secrets of Enigma).
On 21 February 2000, Polish President Aleksander Kwaà Âniewski posthumously awarded RÃ³à ¼ycki the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for outstanding contributions to his homeland.
In 2007 a three-sided memorial was unveiled before the Imperial Castle in Poznaà Â, commemorating the three mathematician-cryptologists (Rejewski, RÃ³à ¼ycki and Zygalski), alumni of the University of Poznaà Â, who reconstructed the German Enigma machine and developed methods of breaking Enigma ciphers, thus contributing to subsequent Allied victory in World War II.
In 2009 the Polish Post issued a series of four commemorative stamps, one of which pictured RÃ³à ¼ycki and fellow mathematician-cryptologists Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski.
In 2014 RÃ³à ¼ycki, Rejewski, and Zygalski were posthumously awarded the prestigious IEEE Milestone Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in recognition of achievements that have changed the world. On 5 August 2014 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) honored Rejewski, RÃ³à ¼ycki, and Zygalski with its prestigious Milestone Award, which recognizes achievements that have changed the world. Milestones was given for "First Breaking of Enigma Code by the Team of Polish Cipher Bureau, 1932-1939", they built the âÂÂbombaâ â the first cryptanalytic machine to break codes. Their work was a foundation of British code breaking efforts which, with later American assistance, helped end World War II. In 2014 a commemorative plaque in Polish and English, dedicated to RÃ³à ¼ycki and his two colleagues, was unveiled before the Polish Academy of Sciences Mathematics Institute in Warsaw.
In 2018 a bench commemorating RÃ³à ¼ycki was unveiled in a park in the town of Wyszków, where RÃ³à ¼ycki had attended secondary school.
In 2021 the Enigma Cipher Centre, an educational and scientific institution dedicated to the Polish mathematicians who broke the Enigma cipher, including Jerzy RÃ³à ¼ycki, opened in Poznaà Â.