DOB: 23 June 1912
Age: at time of death, 41. at time of Bletchley Park, ~30
Bio:"As the World War Two codebreaker, who killed himself after receiving a criminal conviction for his homosexuality, is granted a Royal pardon we look back at his life..He is widely seen as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence and is credited with helping to shorten the course of the war.
Turing was born in 1912 in a nursing home in Paddington, London, another biographer Andrew Hodges has said. Science was "an extra-curricular passion", which led him to become an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge – and it was here that homosexuality became a definitive part of his identity, Mr Hodge said... although not one of the political intellectuals of the 1930s, Turing followed current events and was influenced in studying ciphers by the prospect of war with Germany. Upon British declaration of war on September 3, Turing took up full-time work at the wartime cryptanalytic headquarters, Bletchley Park...Turing was arrested and came to trial on March 31 1952, after the police learned of his sexual relationship with a young Manchester man. Mr Hodges said he made no serious denial or defence, instead telling everyone that he saw no wrong with his actions. Despite his achievements, in 1952 he was prosecuted for homosexuality, which was then illegal. To avoid prison, Turing agreed to receive injections of oestrogen for a year, which was intended to reduce his libido in a process known as chemical castration. He subsequently died of cyanide poisoning aged 41 – an inquest recorded a verdict of suicide, although his mother and others maintained his death was accidental." (Dixon, The Telegraph) Accomplishments/ Relation to Bletchley Park:
"During the Second World War, Alan Turing worked at the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park – the forerunner of GCHQ – where he devised the techniques which cracked the German Enigma code...By 1942, he was well established there, and seen as "shabby, nail-bitten, tieless, sometimes halting in speech and awkward of manner", according to Mr Hodges."(Dixon, The Telegraph) |