Ann Katharine Mitchell (née Williamson) was born 19 November 1922 and during World War II was one of the women who worked on decrypting messages encoded in the German Enigma cypher at Bletchley Park. She has written several academic books about the psychological effects of divorce on children including "Someone to Turn to: Experiences of Help Before Divorce" (1981) and "Children in the Middle: Living Through Divorce" (1985). She married John Angus Macbeth Mitchell in December 1948 and lives in Edinburgh.
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Education
Ann Williamson was educated at Headington School in Oxford from 1930–1939 before winning a place to study maths at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford (1940–1943). At the time relatively few women went to Oxford and even fewer studied maths. There were only five women in Ann Williamson's year at Oxford and she remarked that the men coming to university had been taught maths much better at school than the girls. Indeed, it was suggested to her by the headmistress of her school that studying maths was "unladylike" and her parents had to overrule her school to allow her to take up her place at Oxford.
In the 1970s she returned to university to study social policy and in 1980 she graduated with a Master of Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh.
Wartime work
Ann Williamson was recruited to work at Bletchley Park in September 1943 after she graduated from Oxford and for two years until May 1945 she worked in Hut 6 on German Army and Air Force Enigma decryptions. She was recruited as a temporary worker with the Foreign Office on an annual salary of £150 (increased to £200 after her 21st birthday). A lot of her work involved making 'menus' - cribs that were used to identify what that days Enigma settings might be. After the war like others who worked at Bletchley she was instructed to forget about her work there and never to talk about it.
Her story is included in the book "The Bletchley Girls: War, Secrecy, Love and Loss: The Women of Bletchley Park Tell Their Story" by the broadcaster Tessa Dunlop.