ALAN TURING
ENIGMA
An English mathematician, logician and cryptographer, Alan Turing was responsible for breaking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II. His work gave the Allies the edge they needed to win the war in Europe, and led to the creation of the computer. On the PBS NewsHour tonight, Jeffrey Brown interviews Benedict Cumberbatch about his role as Turing in “The Imitation Game.”
Turing took his own life in 1954, two years after being outed as gay. Homosexuality was still a crime in Great Britain at the time, and Turing was convicted of “indecency.” He died from eating an apple laced with cyanide. He was only 41 years old.
At the time of his death, the public had no idea what he had contributed to the war effort. Sixty years later, Queen Elizabeth II officially pardoned Turing.
Andrew Hodges, a mathematician at the Mathematical Institute at Oxford University, wrote the biography “Alan Turing: The Enigma”, which inspired the film. We spoke with Hodges this week about some things many people don’t know about Turing.
7 Unknown facts about Alan Turing
1. He was an Olympic athlete
- “I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard.”
2. He got bad grades and frustrated his teachers
His English Teacher wrote :
- “I can forgive his writing, though it is the worst I have ever seen, and I try to view tolerantly his unswerving inexactitude and slipshod, dirty, work, inconsistent though such inexactitude is in a utilitarian; but I cannot forgive the stupidity of his attitude towards sane discussion on the New Testament.”
3. The father of the computer also dabbled in physics, biology, chemistry and neurology.
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| Pilot ACE, 1950, is one of Britain’s earliest stored program computers and the oldest complete general purpose electronic computer. It was based on plans for a larger computer (the ACE) designed by the mathematician Alan Turing between 1945 and 1947. Photo by SSPL/Getty Images. |
4. He developed a new field of biology out of his fascination with daisies.
- The subject of one of his seminal papers on the topic was called “Outline of the Development of the Daisy.”
- His work on the subject has been cited more than 8,000 times.
5. He stuttered when talking
6. He didn’t keep his gay sexuality a secret among friends.
- In 1952, he was arrested and charged with “indecency” after a brief relationship with another man. Defiant, he did not deny the charges.
- “When he was arrested, the first thing he said was he thought that this shouldn’t be against the law,” Hodges said. “He gave a statement that was unapologetic, that detailed what had happened.”
7. He refused to let a punishment of chemical castration stop him from working
- The punishment for homosexuality was chemical castration, a series of hormone injections that left Turing impotent. It also caused gynecomastia, giving him breasts. But Turing refused to let the treatment sway him from his work, keeping up his lively spirit.
Homosexuality was considered a security risk at the time, and the conviction cost Turing his security clearance. That was a harsh blow, and Hodges believes that when he was restricted from leaving the country anymore, it ultimately led Turing to suicide.
- “After he’d been revealed as gay in 1952, he couldn’t do any more secret work,” Hodges said. “It would have been hard to accept that he was not trusted.”
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