Recorded - November 21, 2015 by UW ITMS
Seminar title - Bill Tutte: A Snapshot of
His Life
[Bruce Richter]
Welcome to today’s edition of the Tutte
Seminar – obviously a very popular topic.
I’m very pleased to introduce our speaker
today, Dan Younger of the Department of Combinatorics
and Optimization.
Dan was my PhD supervisor a few years ago.
Dan has had a long association with the University,
from the late 1960s, and before that he worked
in industry, in particular at General Electric
where he proved the characterization of regular
languages and is also very well known to people
in combinatorial optimization and graph theory
for the Lucchesi-Younger theorem.
Dan has had many PhD students here and supervised
many master’s students and has long been
a very distinguished teacher and it's my great
pleasure to introduce my advisor and friend
Dan Younger, who will talk to us today about
Bill Tutte – a shapshot of his life.
[Dan Younger]
So on September 29th I was looking through,
trying to get rid of some papers in a box
in my office, and I came upon this letter.
[checks audio]
And this is the letter. It was written June
7th, 1996.
And so, I thought it was an interesting letter
and I thought maybe it might be nice to share
it with you.
June 7th is one day after June 6th and June
6th is the anniversary of D-Day and that’s
partly related to this letter.
And so, 1996. Tutte was born in 1917, so he
would be 79 at this time.
And at this time, he was still under the requirements
of the official secrets act – not to say
anything about what happened during the war.
And in this letter, you’ll see he’s invited
to go back to Bletchley Park for the first
time since the war.
This tells that story from his point of view,
so you can actually see him entering again,
Bletchley Park.
And so, it’s nice to follow not just the
story but also his own take on the story – and
that’s why I wanted to present this to you.
So here’s a picture of Bill, a little earlier
in 1987, so he would have been 70 at that
time.
You can see that it’s graduation day and
he has just received an honorary doctorate
from the University.
And you can see that Dorothea is quite pleased
at her husband, and what has occurred.
And he looks pretty pleased there himself.
They lived out in West Montrose, a tiny village
west of here and this is the house they lived
in.
They lived in there from the time in 1962
when they moved to Waterloo.
On two acres of land, it’s right next to
this bridge – the covered bridge, sometimes
called the kissing bridge.
And now we begin with the letter.
And this letter is – all of the letter will
be demonstrated and you can read it as we
go along.
And this is the beginning of the letter.
Now, Bill’s wife Dorothea, she died in 1994
– December 1994 – so this is a year and
a half after that.
And he has decided that the property is too
big and that maybe he should go back to England.
And so, he goes back, and this is written
from his niece Jeanne’s place where he’s
been given a room, in Newmarket England.
Newmarket’s about ten miles from Cambridge
– east of Cambridge, and Cambridge is about
60 miles from London.
He was, as I say, born there, and this also
is the place which now has made a memorial
in his honour.
And so, I will at the end, show you some pictures
from that unveiling in Newmarket.
So as he says, he’s been there about a month
and he said he feels settled.
Actually, to jump ahead a little bit, three
years later he will come back to Waterloo
and spend the rest of his time here.
This is Jeanne, his niece whom he is living
with.
She’s the daughter of his older brother
Joseph, who’s sixteen years older than her.
And so, she is only fifteen years younger
than Bill and there was a very close relationship
between them all their lives.
And when he was at university, he would come
home for the weekend and she would find him
an absolute fountain of knowledge and really
enjoyed the relationship.
And that was mutual and true throughout their
lives.
And that’s why he felt comfortable going
back there to live with Jeanne.
This is Newmarket – the clock tower that’s
in the center of the town.
But here’s a more typical scene – it’s
horse country.
In the background is Newmarket. And all around
Newmarket is horse training facilities.
This is historic. Newmarket is the very first
place in which horse racing took place, according
to Google, back in the 1100s.
But it became a center of horse racing when
the kings – King James in the early 1600s
– decided to go out there.
King James built a palace in Newmarket.
And so, on the very first day on our visit
in September, when we got there we were taken
out to see a stable.
This particular stable is owned by Sheikh
Mohammed, the ruler of Dubai. Just an absolutely
fabulous place.
I’ll tell a story that I was going to leave
out, that, well incidently, I stand next to
the horse and what does he do, he bites me
in the shoulder, until he gets a swat from
Hugh Anderson – who thinks it’s funny,
you see.
But anyway, to digress even over this digression,
this stable was built in 1903 by Fredrick
Stanley the 16th Earl of Darby.
And Stanley was earlier, a governor general
of Canada.
And in that role, his children got interested
in hockey and he donated the Stanley Cup – which
is now a most important symbol, I guess, of
Canadian sporting life.
So I’m just recovering from this rather
rude shock there, but this happened my very
first day in Newmarket.
They had to take me to the horses.
But actually, Bill himself was born at a horse
stable – Fitzroy House, the main place of
that.
His father was the gardener there and his
mother the housekeeper.
Here is the center of town. Very close, just
within a block of the clock tower.
And here is where the monument to Tutte is,
well, it’s actually already there.
But on the left of this is a, you’ll see
it in some other pictures, is a place which
once held gardens.
And his father was the gardener in that garden
that was right next to the Rutland Arms hotel.
He was the gardener and supplied the vegetables
and flowers for the tables of this hotel.
So they picked a very good place to form their
monument, unbeknownst. They didn’t know
that.
Here actually, you can see that T K Maxx is
the place that actually had been used at the
time, that people would drive their horse
carriages through that 
archway to that entrance.
You can just see the entrance there, and then
park their horses over at T K Maxx’s when
it was that.
But the garden was developed in that area.
But I’m digressing a bit. Let’s get back
to the letter.
Oh, well, let me still digress a little more,
if I may.
So I want to tell a little bit about Tutte’s
early life.
The family, rather soon when he was still
a baby probably because this was 1917, 1918…
It was the end of the war, things were unstable.
They actually couldn’t keep this position.
They moved to another place – Anglewood
Green, which was on the other side of London.
Then, up to Durham, farther north, and finally
up to Yorkshire – to a lovely place called
Moore End.
And that’s a place that Tutte remembered
rather nostalgically.
And then, when he was about seven years old,
they came back to Newmarket.
Well, not quite Newmarket. To Cheveley, a
little tiny village which is just three miles
east of Newmarket.
But that’s why his father worked in town,
at the hotel, but this is where he lived.
And this is about the only street in town,
called High Street. There are no commercial
establishments at all.
And so, up this way, you come to – well,
first, this is looking back the other way
along High Street.
And then if you walk up this direction, there’s
the house that he grew up in.
Actually, this sloping roof – the room under
that wasn’t there at the time.
And actually, it was two attached houses and
they lived in the rear half of the attached
pair.
That’s his boyhood home, looking in rather
good shape now.
This is the idea of the way that house is.
It’s two houses put together, perhaps of
exactly the same design except for their house,
they had a facing of flint rock rather than
brick, as here.
And here is Cheveley School, as it stands
today, and here is the school room inside,
which was a shock to me – just one room
for the students there.
So it was basically a one-room schoolhouse.
And this is the room. And this is what you
see when you look out from that room.
And here is another look at the school where
you’re inside the fence, rather than on
the outside.
Basically the same picture.
And here’s another picture. Actually, you’re
on the outside again.
Except for that, you see it’s the same.
I mean, the angle is a little different but
the picture is taken closer so you don’t
really see the right hand but it hasn’t
really changed at all.
And, there he is. I guess he’s probably
in about his first year here. At the pink
arrow.
So, let’s get back to the letter.
And here he describes this as a rather active
month, that he made two trips to see Cedric
Smith.
Now, Cedric Smith was one of his friends from
his undergraduate days at Trinity College.
Cedric was the one who was most active in
keeping them all sort of together but they
all met each other as much as they could.
By this time, well, let me go on a little
further.
So he goes to see Cedric at the Galton Laboratory
– this was his second visit since he got
there – and you can see that Cedric has
had some kind of operation – I think it
was a hip operation, which makes it difficult
for him to walk now.
This is University College London, which the
Galton Laboratory is associated with.
And in the letter he was saying it took him,
he was a half kilometer away and had to walk
there to get there.
And here are the four. These are four who
met at Trinity College in their first year.
The other three were mathematics majors and
Bill was a major in chemistry at that time.
And they had a friendship which lasted all
their lives.
Arthur Stone became a topologist and married
another mathematician and they had two little
mathematicians and so forth.
Cedric Smith, he became a professor of biostatistics
at the Galton Laboratory of UCL.
And here’s Brooks, who is hardest to find
a picture of.
I couldn’t find one, so I just had to cut
out the picture from the [takes a drink of
water] well, I haven’t shown where I’ve
cut it from.
He became a tax inspector – but he is well-known
to graph theorists, Brooks’s Theorem.
So these four worked as an undergraduate.
Actually, Tutte was getting a first-class
honours in chemistry while he was spending
most of his days working on mathematics.
But this is the four of them.
And here is a picture of them. And if you’re
getting used to these pink arrows, you can
find them.
I had to cut this picture out. I couldn’t
find any picture of… they do exist but not
online.
And here you can see today, where that picture
was taken. Right there.
This is in the forecourt of Trinity College.
And one of the things which they were working
on was trying to study the question of whether
it was possible to break a square into smaller
squares, all of which were unequal.
And this is the smallest such square which
is known to this day.
This is not the one which they found – it
is one which is commemorated on the memorial
site.
You can see, it’s exactly the same square.
This appears on the memorial site.
It’s a bit of a selfie. This is my daughter.
So continuing with the letter, I judge the
meeting at Reading a great success.
So, there was a combinatorial meeting there,
which had Paul Erdös and many other famous
mathematicians.
And he gave a talk, which was… I guess he
doesn’t really mention what his talk is
about.
It was about dividing an equilateral triangle
into smaller equilateral – unequal – equilateral
triangles.
And was also was asked to give a speech in
honour of Crispin Nash-Williams.
And apparently he did an OK job.
This is the University of Reading and here’s
a picture of Paul Erdös and Crispin Nash-Williams.
Now I should say, particularly for those who
weren’t here in the early days, that Crispin
was one of the founding members of the C&O
Department.
He played a tremendous role in the early development
of the department.
He was the graduate officer. He made rigorous
comprehensive exams for graduate students.
And he was also a fearsome thesis examiner.
One of his advisees was Vasek Chvatal.
But he was good. Not only with the strongest
students, but also the weak students.
He was good at taking them and giving them
lessons and tutorials that brought them up
to meet the standard that was required by
his comprehensive exams.
And he played a tremendous role in the development
of the early department.
He left after five years and went back to
the University of Aberdeen.
And then eventually, when Richard Rado died,
he took the chair there, at Reading.
And that was why this particular meeting commemorates
his retirement there.
He was a very important figure in the early
department.
One of my students referred to him as ‘Smash
Williams’ – which was actually meant very
approvingly, meaning that was his way of attacking
combinatorial problems.
Another of my students, Claudio Lucchesi,
was very proud of his thesis and wanted the
most rigorous examination possible so he wanted
Nash-Williams to be his external examiner.
He had a reputation of being rigorous.
Not only that, but Paul Seymour and others
can tell you how rigorous a job he did in
examining papers.
So, undoubtedly Tutte had a lot of good things
to say about Nash-Williams at that time.
So here he explains that he had much to say
about Kirchhoff’s Laws – that is, the
laws about electrical networks.
And so, Bela Bollobas, who’s a professor
at Trinity College, he invited him to give
a talk at Cambridge.
And apparently, these laws were an extension
of the ordinary Kirchhoff Laws and they seemed,
as he says, to be interested in that work.
And so, here’s a picture of Bela.
And here is the front entrance to Trinity
College. You can see Henry VIII sitting there,
in all his glory.
Standing there.
And, here is the photographer for most of
these pictures – my daughter Meredith.
Not this one.
And, here is the forecourt of Trinity College.
This is… actually, it’s amazing how small
Trinity College is. It’s just this square,
and then another one behind it which is smaller.
And then, another side-such court. And that’s
all it is, and yet it’s such a famous place
for learning.
It’s actually a very wonderful atmosphere.
There’s a lot of bustle of Cambridge outside,
but once one gets inside it’s all gone.
It’s a lovely place.
Here’s the Neville’s Court, where Tutte
had his residence when he was a graduate student.
As an undergraduate student, he was in the
front court but as a graduate student, he
was here in Neville’s Court.
And one of the most famous parts of Trinity
College is the Wren Library.
Christopher Wren was the architect of this
library. It’s just exquisite.
One is just struck by the beauty of the place.
Actually, during – a little digression – but
during the early part of the war, when Tutte
was still a student at Trinity College, he
would spend some of his evenings as the fire
warden on the roofs of the buildings around
this court.
And Cedric painted the roof of Wren College
grey in order to try to make it less visible
from the air.
That was his first job, and then Cedric became
a hospital porter.
Cedric was a Quaker, and therefore refused
military service and so he after that became
a hospital porter and that continued even
long after the war.
They didn’t want to make it particularly
easy to opt out of the war.
And this is still in back of that Neville’s
Court, is the so-called ‘The Backs’.
And here is the river Cam, over which there’s
been a bridge for a long time.
And while we are in Cambridge, we go out to
the outskirts and we see this building.
And this is where Tutte went to high school.
At the time, it was the Cambridge and County
High School for Boys.
And now it’s Hill’s Road Sixth Form College.
But, there it is.
OK, let’s get back to our main story.
A couple of weeks ago, Jeanne got a phone
call from Tony Sale of Bletchley Park, asking
if she had any idea where I was at the moment.
To which she replied, ‘he’s sitting beside
me.’
This is Tutte, of course. Typical Tutte.
The reason of course, is that Tony Sale hadn’t
heard that he wasn’t still in Canada so
this was a surprise.
And his message was that Colossus had been
rebuilt and there was going to be a ceremony
at Bletchley Park and he invited Bill to come
along.
And then, the machine would then be turned
on by the Duke of Kent.
And so, he’s supposed to come over to this
ceremony.
So Richard, now Richard is Jeanne’s son,
Richard Youlden, he took Bill to Bletchley.
Bletchley was over halfway between Oxford
and Cambridge.
And so, then you can see that he couldn’t
remember how to get there after fifty years.
Unfortunately, apparently other veterans had
the same problem and the ceremony was delayed,
but anyway, this is it.
Here is a picture of Richard Youlden, as he
is today. And this is in the front court area
of Trinity.
And standing behind him is Howard Cadman,
who was very helpful in hosting different
parts of our trip there.
So, he joins the group of veterans and the
Duke comes in and shakes hands and Tony introduces
me as he who broke the Tunny key.
Now, you have to remember that Tutte’s not
allowed to say anything.
Of course, Tony has a little bit more… Tony
has a reason for trying to change this situation
because Tony has built the Colossus – rebuilt
the Colossus.
He had trouble getting permission to do so,
but he had gotten permission to do so.
The problem that he faced, Tony is that he
has the Colossus and he’s not supposed to
say what Colossus is used for.
So, Tony has a lot of motivation to try to
break that situation.
‘Tony introduced me as he who broke the
Tunny key.’
And so, his royal highness replies ‘that
was by hand methods, I suppose’.
And so, Tutte says something that nobody could
object to. He says ‘I agree.’
And then he adds a little more, which is ultra-modest
of course, ‘I just happened to write it
out on the right periods’ said I.
And Tony opined that it wasn’t quite that
simple – and they passed it on.
And then they gathered for the ceremony, and
there were speeches and Colossus was officially
turned on.
It was a year later that Tony Sale had an
interview with The New Scientist.
And that story came out on Tutte’s 80th
birthday, that explains exactly what happened,
and what the relation of Tutte’s work and
Colossus was.
And so, I don’t know if, in the intervening
period, between this ceremony and the next
year, whether there was some understanding
that this was going to be done or not.
That’s not part of what I understand, but
it was a year later that the story broke.
And this is not a very good picture, but I
thought it would be worth including because
it shows HRH pushing the button and here’s
Tommy Flowers, the person who had built the
original Colossus 
and Tony Sale.
And here, the same day, is a slightly better
picture of Tony Sale and Bille Tutte.
This is the day of which he is writing about
in the letter.
And I guess Tutte is a little amused. But
anyway. The person is a reporter, I believe,
between them.
That’s right at that moment.
OK, so now I’m going to tell you a little
bit about Bletchley Park, which they were
visiting.
Here’s a nice picture of the mansion on
Bletchley Park from a distance.
And you can see the grey heron in the middle
of the lake.
And here’s the mansion up close.
By and large, most of the exhibits are in
the mansion itself – most of the main exhibits.
But the Colossus is somewhere far away and
there’s a bit of a dispute between those
who are dealing with the Colossus and those
who are part of the Bletchley Park Trust.
And here’s a picture which I never saw before,
of Bill Tutte at that time.
The spots are due to glare from the plastic
which is covering it but that’s what Bill
Tutte looked like when he entered, or in the
early years at Bletchley.
When he arrived at Bletchley, he was first
given a Hagelin machine, a machine which was
developed by the Swedish and was used for
field communications.
Not a particularly high level of cipher machine,
just intended for temporary security.
And Tutte worked on that and showed how to
break it after about three months.
So then, having done that, he was moved on
to the Lorenz machine – the Tunny machine.
This is, of course, a modern picture. There
was no Tunny machine there.
I mean, they had teletype output which they
could hardly even figure out because it was
coming at high speed and what it was, was
a mystery.
And Tutte, as he said, was lucky to figure
out what the number of spokes, on all those
wheels, from a sample of tape which was 4000
bits long. Not bits, but 400 positions long.
4000 positions long.
And from that they were able to figure out
what the machine was.
But of course, actually, just because you
know what a machine was…
They knew what the Hagland machine was beforehand.
They knew what the Enigma machine was beforehand.
But then there’s still the question of what
do you do when someone makes ciphers on this.
And so, Tutte’s intellectual really tremendous
contribution on this was to give a method
– a so-called statistical method.
I don’t know if he was helped by his friend
Cedric in this, for breaking codes – ciphers
that were on the Lorenz machine.
Here, tries to show the rotors more impressively.
All of them.
So we looked into the museum. He’s now referring
to the museum that was in the mansion.
It was more of a war museum to him than a
cryptographic one. “Perhaps that will change
with time.”
I saw it recently and I think that assessment
is still valid.
And then, we trekked across to where Colossus
bode and Richard had trouble with the steps.
But with help, they were surmounted. It was
a very hot day.
Outside there was some breeze but none chez
Colossus.
He took a photograph of me – maybe it was
that photograph, or perhaps some other one.
And eventually, they went back to the mansion.
They enjoyed a buffet lunch, went back to
the car and he had trouble being nice to all
of the veterans who recognized him there.
And then he says “since then, there’s
been nothing comparable to report”.
Again, a bit of Tutte.
And that’s the letter.
Here’s where the Colossus is located.
And you can see that, on a hot day, it would
be hot there.
And I think this is actually, maybe it’s
been polished up a little but not too much
Where Colossus was in the war. At least, that’s
my understanding.
And there’s a picture of the Colossus machine.
There’s another picture of Bill. Later on
in the war, he fashioned a mustache and that’s
a picture.
Well, that’s the letter. I now will make
a few remarks about the ceremony which was
held in Newmarket, which is a memorial to
Tutte.
So, it’s held right there at the Rutland
Arms Hotel.
And where this store is, was where the horse
garage used to be and where Tutte’s father’s
garden was.
But here’s a wheel which was put on the
ground.
And you can imagine how many spokes it has
in it – 41, the number of spokes that was
in the first wheel that he determined of the
rotor.
And there’s a message around there which
says that this is one of the greatest intellectual
feats of WWII.
So, this is before the ceremony begins.
The children of All-Saints primary school
choir are gathered to sing.
And the actual representation of Tutte is
behind these flags on the left.
On the right, there’s an information board
which has Tutte and some facts about him.
And on the back is a list of major contributors,
including the University of Waterloo mathematics
faculty.
And you can find, if you have a mobile device,
you can find out various information about
Tutte by going to each of those bollards and
putting it in.
And here’s a picture from further out. You
see that there’s a crowd that’s gathered
along High Street.
The children I think now are singing and once
the ceremony starts, the first thing they
sing is O Canada.
Actually, they were very generous in acknowledging
him as Canadian.
And here, again, is a slightly different picture.
They may have gotten to God Save the Queen
at this point because their music isn’t
put on the ground.
And here’s a picture of the honoured guests,
which are about to come out.
Those guests included Mei Roberts, widow of
Jerry Roberts, who had publicized Tutte’s
work.
And the mayor, and everyone involved.
Dennis Flowers, the son of Tommy Flowers,
was there and many people invited quite a
wonderful group of people.
And here, these guests are entering for the
ceremony.
Speeches by the mayor and local rectors, etcetera.
And here, now the ceremony is over and Rachel
Wood, a wonderful local schoolteacher, is
telling them about the squaring the square.
And you see a few of them have kept their
Canadian flags, which were more in evidence
when they were singing O Canada.
Here, it later and the ceremony is over.
And if you look carefully, can you see the
image of Tutte on the left side?
Actually, it depends a lot on exactly where
you’re standing.
And also, it’s affected a little bit by
the lighting in the rear.
So there are better angles. I don’t know
that this is a particularly good angle, but
this gives you the idea.
These are panels with holes. They’re supposed
to be reminiscent of teletype tape.
But together they form a pattern and supposedly,
the best place to stand is right on top of
the squaring the square.
So this wouldn’t be quite the best place,
because you can see the squared square here,
but you can still see an image of Bill.
And that’s what I wanted to say.
Questions:
Q – Would you comment on the children’s
math society?
A – Yes, so the same Rachel Wood has organized
a monthly session for the children of Newmarket,
which is called the Bill Tutte Maths Club.
And after the ceremony a little later in the
afternoon, I was invited to speak with them
and I had a wonderful experience with them.
There are some very nice pictures of that,
but I haven’t brought them with me today,
unfortunately.
But it’s very nice, and each month, they
have some rather wonderful speakers. I’m
not trying to talk about when I was there
but she’s done a really nice job and the
children are quite enthusiastic.
Some of the loveliest pictures are the pictures
of the children, who are quite enthusiastic.
One of the things, when I was there was giving
them a whole sequence of puzzles to work on,
which were math colouring problems, and extensions
of them like the free-flow problem.
The children, I think, did better than the
adults in actually dealing with these problems,
by and large.
The children varied a lot in their capabilities.
But as a class, I think they did better than
their seniors.
Q – Did Bill discuss his Bletchley Park
days after he came back to Waterloo? I mean,
when he came back from England, did you or
Murti have any conversations where Bill actually
talked about the Bletchley Park days?
A – Well, a year later he came back for
the 80th birthday conference. At that time,
was when the story broke. It was just during
that meeting, so I would say, except for acknowledging
that it was public now, nothing was spoken
of really at that time.
But then he came back a year later for two
months instead of one month and then a year
later than that, he came back permanently,
shall we say.
So, then he wrote an article – the first
article that he wrote was called ‘Fish and
I’ about his experiences.
But there were two problems with that article.
One was that the editing of it had made sort
of a muddle of it and he has Cs and 5s and
they mixed up – half the time it’s a C
when it’s supposed to be a 5 and because
of that, he was very unhappy with that. He
was never given the proofs to see before it
came out.
And meanwhile, he started remembering more
things and so it was in 2001, just a year
before he died, that he wrote a comprehensive,
and rather beautiful account called ‘At
Bletchley Park’.
And so, in that period, he would then talk
about his war experience.
Any last questions?
Q - The photos were remarkably good. Do you
have any close-up pictures of the statue?
A – well, that’s… I have to… a close-up
picture isn’t a good thing, because all
you see is those holes, shall we say. You
have to be standing back in order to get an
appreciation.
There are somewhat better pictures than either
of the ones that I showed here. All of these
– I don’t want to make an ad for it, but
all of these were taken on Meredith’s iPhone.
[Bruce Richter]
Thank you very much, Dan.
Applause.
