Ralph Erskine

Thomas Ralph Erskine CB (14 October 1933 – 9 April 2021) was a senior Northern Ireland government lawyer and historian of wartime codebreaking.

Biography Family and early life His parents were Robert Todd Erskine, a businessman from Belfast, and Mary Edith Erskine ( Motherwell). He had three siblings, one of whom died in childhood.

In 1989 he was warned by the Royal Ulster Constabulary that a member of the Provisional IRA had been seen conducting reconnaissance of their home. In 2002, he was awarded the Gauss Lectureship from the German Mathematical Society. He was a member of the Historical Advisory Group of the Bletchley Park Trust. He was also involved with the Crypto Simulation Group. In his book The Secret War, the military historian Sir Max Hastings said: "My obligation is immense to Ralph Erskine, a fount of information about every aspect of wartime code-breaking, which is both a maze and a minefield for the uninitiated." After hearing of Erskine's death, Hastings added: "Every historian of the Second World War and student of cryptology owes him a debt for his extraordinary contribution to the scholarship." Hugh Sebag-Montefiore called him "the greatest expert on the Enigma-M4", which was the Enigma cipher system used by the German Navy from February 1942 to the end of the war. The breaking of Heimisch and Triton (1998) Kriegsmarine short signal system –and how Bletchley Park exploited them (1999) The Admiralty and cipher machines during the Second World War – Not so stupid after all (2002) Erprobung, Gegenmaßnahmen, Bewertung Der Krieg der Code-Brecher (2002) Captured Kriegsmarine Enigma Documents at Bletchley Park (2008)