Tag Archives: Codebreaker – Alan Turing’s life and legacy

Turing tizzy

Alan Turing led one of those lives that seems more like an act of fiction than anything else. Born June 23, 1912, the centenary is being celebrated in the UK and internationally as he was an instrumental figure in the field of science. This video about the UK’s Science Museum Turing centenary exhibition titled, Codebreaker – Alan Turing’s life and legacy, only hints at some of his accomplishments and tragedies,

John Butterworth in his June 21, 2012 posting on the Guardian Science blogs describes a few of the artifacts he saw in a preview showing of the exhibit,

There is the prototype of one of the first ever general-purpose programmable computers (see picture above [in Butterworth’s posting]). Machines like this were used to help find and solve the metal fatigue problem which had caused the first passenger jets to crash. They have the relevant piece of the Comet jet, fished out of the Mediterranean. Enigma machines, including one loaned by Sir Michael Jagger [Rolling Stones] of Honky Tonk Women fame; a bottle of the hormone pills which Turing was forced to take by a profoundly grateful nation after he saved many thousands of lives in World War II, and loved a man.

There is an extensive Wikipedia essay on Turing, which provides more detail about his accomplishments  and travails including his conviction for ‘indecency’ in 1952. Homosexual behaviour was illegal in Britain at the time and once convicted Turing was given the choice, as noted in the video, of prison or chemical castration. From the Turing essay, here’s a brief description of Turning and his death (Note: I have removed links and footnotes),

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (…, 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.

During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre. For a time he was head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

After the war he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE.

On 8 June 1954, Turing’s cleaner found him dead; he had died the previous day. A post-mortem examination established that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. When his body was discovered an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide, it is speculated that this was the means by which a fatal dose was delivered. An inquest determined that he had committed suicide, and he was cremated at Woking Crematorium on 12 June 1954. Turing’s mother argued strenuously that the ingestion was accidental, caused by her son’s careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. David Leavitt has suggested that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 film Snow White, his favourite fairy tale, pointing out that he took “an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Witch immerses her apple in the poisonous brew.”

Of course, Snow White doesn’t die because the poison puts her into a ‘sleep’ from which she can be awakened by a kiss from her true love, as per the Disney 1937 classic. This suggests to me that Turing was a bit of a ‘romantic’. Apples are also associated with forbidden knowledge (as per the bible’s Adam and Eve story) and with Isaac Newton and gravity.

There are celebrations* taking place worldwide. You can find a list of Turing events here on the Leeds University website. I did search for Canadian events and found this,

I have one more piece I’d like to include here; it’s an excerpt from a June 20, 2012 posting by S. Barry Cooper for the Guardian’s Northerner blog,

John Turing talks in the family’s reminscences about his younger brother Alan, recalling how the future computer genius was noted for:

bad reports, slovenly habits and unconventional behaviour

The ‘neurotypical’ John says that neither he nor his parents “had the faintest idea that this tiresome, eccentric and obstinate small boy was a budding genius.”

It is still very common for geekishly irritating little boys and girls to suffer misunderstanding and routine bullying at school. Nowadays Alan would probably have been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.

Back in 2009 I met a Finnish artist/performer/musician who was working on an opera about Alan Turing and his life. I haven’t hear of it since but if anyone’s life ever cried out for ‘opera’ treatment, Turing’s does. I hope that opera got written and one day there’ll be a performance I can view.

*July 21, 2014 ‘celebration’ corrected to ‘celebrations’.