Alec Naylor Dakin (3 April 1912 – 14 June 2003) was a Fellow of University College, Oxford, a cryptologist at Bletchley Park, an Egyptologist and schoolmaster.
Alec's tutor, Oliver Franks encouraged him to begin the study of Egyptology, and he was also guided by Professor Battiscombe Gunn, an English Egyptologist and philologist who had published his first translation from Egyptian in 1906 and, in 1934, was appointed Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford just a few years prior to Alec's time there where Battiscombe devoted himself to his pupils and his classes, at the expense of his own research.
He was clearly destined for a distinguished career as an Oxford Egyptologist but just two years later in 1940, his life took an unexpected turn when he was recruited by her Majesty's government to work as a cryptographer at Bletchley Park – to assist the war effort.
He worked in complete secrecy in hut 4,[2] alongside many others at Bletchley, including the well known cryptographer, Alan Turing who was put in charge of all of them by Winston Churchill.
As with other Bletchley Park staff he was obliged to take an oath of secrecy, never speaking to anyone of his war work, even his wife Joan, whom he married in 1953.