Abstract
A linear (geometrically ‘affine’) substitution is a special polygraphic substitution. The injective encryption step of a polygraphic block encryption
with relatively large n and m is restricted in a particular way.
Although Hill’s cipher system itself saw almost no practical use, it had a great impact upon cryptology.
David Kahn 1967
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Lester S. Hill was assistant professor of mathematics at Hunter College in New York. He received his Ph.D. in 1926 at Yale, aged 35, having been a college teacher for a while. The paper was published in The American Mathematical Monthly under the title Cryptography in an Algebraic Alphabet (Vol. 36, p. 306–312, June—July 1929), with a follow-up Concerning certain linear transformation apparatus of cryptography (Vol. 37, p. 135154, March 1931). Hill received U.S. patent 1 845 947 on his apparatus, Feb. 16, 1932. He was until 1960 professor at Hunter College and died January 9, 1961.
Dr. Werner Kunze, b. about 1890, studied mathematics, physics and philosophy in Heidelberg, was with the cavalry in the First World War, and in January 1918 started work on cryptology in the Auswärtiges Amt. In 1923, he solved a superencrypted French diplomatic code, in 1936 ORANGE and later RED, two Japanese rotor-cipher machines. Kunze was presumably the first professional mathematician to serve in a modern crypt-analytic bureau. Kunze was, like Mauborgne, a passable violin player and Oliver Strachey was known to be a good musician, while Painvin was an excellent cellist. Lambros D. Callimahos, at N.S.A., was a famous flutist.
It may not be wise to believe the story Frederick W. Winterbotham started and Cave Brown told in his book, that Knox and Turing travelled in the middle of 1938 to Warsaw, to meet there, arranged by the Polish Secret Service, a Pole with the pseudonym Richard Lewinski, who allegedly had worked at the firm Heimsoeth & Rincke in Berlin as mathematician and engineer and had offered to procure a copy of the ENIGMA. Marian Rejewski, in 1982, called this “a fable”. However, Harry Hinsley reports that already in 1938 the Polish Secret Service had contacted the G.C. & C.S. and Knox re ENIGMA. This first contact, however, was not flourishing; Knox called the Polish ‘stupid and ignorant’.
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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Bauer, F.L. (2002). Encryption Steps: Linear Substitution. In: Decrypted Secrets. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04736-1_5
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