Aged 94, Captain Raymond “Jerry” Roberts, one of the last of the World War Two codebreakers of Bletchley Park, died on the 25th of March. The legendary cryptographer was awarded MBE, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elisabeth II last year.

Roberts was a founding member of the Testery team, which was set up in Bletchley Park in October 1941 and worked until the end of World War Two with the aim to decipher messages sent by the Lorenz, Germany’s highest level cipher system. (On the occasion of Roberts’ award last year a summary article on his activities during World War Two was published by us: ajovomultja.hu/codebreaker-jerry-roberts-has-been-awarded-mbe-by-queen-elisabeth/).

After 1945, he was engaged in marketing and market research for nearly fifty years. He worked in Venezuela from 1954 to 1959, in New York from1960 to 1961, then he returned to home to the UK. He founded two market research companies in 1970 (Roberts Research, Euroresearch). His clients included firms such as British Gas, Reebok, DuPont, Lycra, American Airlines, Chrysler, and Holiday Inn. He retired in 1993.

In the past few years, he was engaged in promoting the work of his one-time colleagues, the “Four T”s (the Testery team, Alan Turing, Bill Tuttle, and Tommy Flowers, who was tasked to design Colossus) to the wider public.