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June 23rd is the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, father of computer
science and artificial intelligence, who committed suicide just shy of 42. In a
shocking and frank memoir, his late elder brother John says Alan’s life might
have turned out a lot better if his mother was not so nagging—and he recounts
the details of his brother’s awful death.
Alan
Turing, who was born 100 years ago on June 23, 1912, might not have invented
the computer. (That honor goes to Charles Babbage and Lord Byron's daughter.)
But today’s computing would be unthinkable without the contributions of the
British mathematician, who laid down the foundations of computer science, broke
Nazi codes that helped win World War II at the famous Bletchley Park, created a
secure speech encryption system, made major contributions to logic and
philosophy, and even invented the concept of Artificial Intelligence. But he
was also an eccentric and troubled man who was persecuted (and prosecuted) for
being gay, a tragedy that contributed to his suicide just short of the age of
42 when he died of cyanide poisoning, possibly from a half-eaten apple found by
his side. He is hailed today as one of the great originators of our
computing age.
In 1959, four years after Alan Turing’s suicide just shy of the age of
42, his mother Sara published her biography Alan M. Turing. Shortly
after, his elder brother John began his own alternative account, seeking to
“put the record straight” and correct any inaccuracies or biases in his
mother’s version. Although he worked on the essay throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s,
John declined to release the account until after his mother’s death, and
ultimately left it unpublished in his private papers. It was found in a drawer
by his son John Dermot Turing, and finally included as part of the re-release
of Alan M.
Turing, in celebration of the centenary of his birth. The following is
adapted from the book:My brother Alan was born on 21* June 1912 in a
No. My mother was fully aware of it before Alan’s death (not, I imagine, that she had the faintest idea of what it implied), but she makes no reference to it in her book. One can put that down to Edwardian reticence if one pleases. In my view, based on such conversation as I had with my mother about it, necessarily reduced to a minimum, her reaction was much what one might expect if a specialist had informed her that her son was color blind or had an incurable obsession with spiders: it was a nasty shock of brief duration and of no great significance. I am trying to make this memoir as truthful as I can, so I will not go to the length of pretending that I like homosexuals. To my mind, what is intolerable is the world of the “gay crusade” and, as my unfortunate brother may be cast in the part of an early and valiant crusader, this is by no means an irrelevant comment.
My mother, perhaps unwittingly, gives the impression in her book that she recognized Alan’s genius from the start, and that she sedulously fostered it. If so, she did not give that impression in the family at the time; in fact, quite the contrary.
‘Alan M. Turing: Centenary Edition’ by Sara Turing. 194 pp.
My father, on the whole, either ignored my brother’s eccentricities, or viewed them with amused tolerance but (as will appear) there were deep dudgeons when Alan started to accumulate appalling school reports at Sherborne. As for myself, with the selfishness of youth, and separated by a gap of four years, I did not care what Alan did, and I was content to go my own way, as indeed he was content to go his. Our interests were so dissimilar that they never clashed. The only person in the household who was forever exasperated with Alan, constantly nagging him about his dirty habits, his slovenliness, his clothes and his offhand manners (and much else, most of it with good reason) was my mother. If this was due to some early recognition of his genius, she was certainly doing nothing to foster it by trying to press him into a conventional mould. Needless to say, she achieved nothing by it except a dogged determination on Alan’s part to remain as unconventional as possible. The truth of the matter, as I now view it in retrospect, is that neither of Alan’s parents or his brother had the faintest idea that this tiresome, eccentric and obstinate small boy was a budding genius. The business burst upon us soon after he went to Sherborne. After a few terms, it became apparent that he was far ahead of the other boys in mathematics: when Alan was sixteen, the maths master told my mother that there was nothing more that he could teach him and he would have to progress from there on his own. I think it must have been when Alan was due to take the School Certificate examination (now replaced by “O” levels) that he read Hamlet in the holidays. My father was delighted when Alan placed the volume on the floor and remarked “Well, there’s one line I like in this play.” My father could already see a burgeoning interest in English literature. But his hopes were dashed when Alan replied that he was referring to the final stage direction (Exeunt, bearing off the bodies).
