Marian Rejewski, a 27-year-old Polish mathematician, cracked the Enigma cipher machine in 1932 — six years before WWII began — using pure mathematical reasoning, without ever seeing the physical machine. His work was the foundation on which Bletchley Park built. In 1939, he smuggled his work and two reconstructed Enigma machines out of Poland in the diplomatic pouches just weeks before the German invasion. He then joined the Polish Army's intelligence service and continued cryptanalysis work in France after the fall of Poland. After France fell in 1940, Rejewski escaped through Spain and Portugal, where he was briefly imprisoned by Spanish authorities and nearly died of typhus. He eventually reached Britain and worked for the Polish section of Bletchley Park until 1942, when he was deemed a security risk (due to his pre-war connections in Poland) and transferred to a cryptographic unit. He was never allowed to work directly on Enigma again. He died in 1980 in relative obscurity in England, never fully recognized in his lifetime. His tombstone reads: "To the memory of Marian Rejewski, mathematician, who first broke the Enigma cipher."