How Lichens Won World War II

[babylonsister]

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/archive/2009/02/08/how-lichens-won-world-war-ii.aspx

How Lichens Won World War II



Okay, a wee bit of an overstatement, but this is still a diverting anecdote from Tim Flannery's review of Dry Storeroom No. 1, a history of the British Natural History Museum:

Lichens, fungi, and algae are referred to as cryptograms, which literally means "hidden marriage"—a reference to their means of reproduction, which long remained a mystery to botanists. During World War II, a misunderstanding about the meaning of this term led to a breakthrough of the greatest military importance. Geoffrey Tandy was the museum's "seaweed man." He only ever published two scientific papers, a lack of productivity that seems to have been owing to a hidden marriage of his own, for Tandy shouldered the burden of running two families in tandem.

His great moment came when a functionary in the Ministry of War became confused between cryptogramists and cryptographers, and recruited Tandy to the British center for signals intelligence at Bletchley Park, where some of the world's brightest minds were working on cracking the German Enigma Code. During Tandy's stay at Bletchley Park several sodden notebooks holding vital clues to the German code were recovered from sunken U-boats, but they seemed damaged beyond recovery. Tandy, however, knew exactly what to do, for the problem was not so different from preserving marine algae. Obtaining special absorbent papers from the museum, Tandy dried the sodden pages and made them readable, an important contribution to deciphering the Enigma Code.

--Bradford Plumer

[dipsydoodle]

1. You've reminded me of a school friend

who went on to do a Phd on the subject of Antarctic Lichens - would you believe.

His only other claim to fame was smuggling phosphorus into school and disrupting a french class when an inkwell caught fire :)

[babylonsister]

2. Lichens in Antartica, something I've always wondered about!

Wow, that's sort of obscure, or maybe not for a scientist. Sounds like a regular card, your friend. ;)

[Buck Laser]

3. That's actually crypotogam not "crypotgram."

Please 'scuse me for being a spelling nazi, but you'll never find out about cryptogams if you don't spell it right.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Somebody like that is going to save Planet Earth.

Some nerdy science type somewhere, muddling along with life and not important-looking at all, is going to trip over the secret of re-creating planetary atmospheres, so we don't go the way of Mars--or some such.

I think it's going to take a technical solution. Global warming/pollution have just gone too far. But, lo and behold, the creativity of the human mind! By the skin of our teeth, once again.