Though he's no stranger to teaching overseas, Carl Boyd, Louis I. Jaffé Professor of History, expects his trip this fall to Poland will be an adventure, nevertheless.

A brief visitor to the former communist bloc nation twice before, Boyd will be in Poznan, Poland, for the 1999-2000 academic year to teach and conduct research under the auspices of the Fulbright Senior Scholar Program.

Boyd will lecture at Adam Mickiewicz University on cryptologic intelligence in pre-World War II Europe, a subject that has fascinated him for the last two decades and has heightened since documents relating to the subject were declassified in recent years.

In his program application, Boyd said he is hopeful that Polish students' eyes will be opened to their forefathers' contributions to solving German military codes and ciphers before the war.

"This ranks very high," Boyd said of the Fulbright award. "I'll do research and bring back experience to the (Old Dominion) classroom."

Boyd has published four books dealing with military intelligence in World War II and, since 1982, he has published 16 refereed articles on the subject.

Boyd said he looks forward to teaching in Poznan, a mere 150 kilometers from Poland's border with Germany and 200 kilometers east of Berlin.

Polish mathematicians were instrumental in solving the German Enigma cipher machine, the device on which the most secret German radio communications were enciphered.

Boyd estimates that the Poles' success helped end the war two years early and saved many lives on both the Allied and Axis sides.

"It made inevitable, to the extent that anything can genuinely be inevitable, an Allied victory over Japan and Germany," he said.

Why were the Allies so successful at breaking Japanese and German codes?

"One key reason was we're an open society," Boyd said, pointing out that both Great Britain and the United States were willing to draw from a greater knowledge base than just Allied nations. Codes often relied on the arts and other cultural areas for their bases, making it essential to have as much input as possible.

The Fulbright program was established in 1946 under legislation introduced by former Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and has become the preeminent international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. The program strives to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and those in other countries.

Individuals are selected on the basis of academic or professional qualifications and potential, plus the ability and willingness to share ideas and experiences with people of diverse cultures. Approximately 4,200 new grants are awarded annually to recipients in 140 countries.