After joining the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service) during the Second World War, Ms Bourne, from High Barnet, worked at sites around Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire as a Bombe machine operator and checker. Veterans Ruth Bourne (left), who worked on Alan Turing's code breaking machine at Bletchley Park, and Dorothea Barron (right) during an International Women's Day event, hosted by the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans, at the RAF Club in Piccadilly, London. (Image: Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire)In 2018 she was awarded the Legion d’honneur – France’s highest military honour – in recognition of her service. The Taxi Charity for Military Veterans wrote on Facebook: “Ruth’s contribution to the monumental task of breaking the Enigma cypher was truly historic. It also sparked the industrialisation of codebreaking and helped pave the way for the first forms of the computers used today.

Source: The Times December 19, 2025 03:05 UTC