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Its not widely publicised but one of the reasons Bletchley Park (and therefore by extention Turing himself) was kept secret until the 1970's was that many nations, including some of our allies such as Canada, continued to use Enigma style machines post war and we continued to listen in. While it makes sense to ensure your allies really are your allies it isn't something you want to publicise.

In addition most of the legend of Britain during WW2 is myth: we've made a whole industry out of a handful of pilots (including one of my grandfathers brothers who died in his Hurricane) saving Britain from certain invasion. Much less mention is made that we were building twice as many planes as the Germans or that our Navy (the biggest in the world and vastly outnumbering Germany's) could have smashed any German invasion forces in hours. For some reason we don't like to admit that in many areas our technology was far ahead of Germany's. Cracking ENIGMA was an awesome advantage and we don't seem to like those as its spoils the 'plucky underdog' story. Homosexual mathematicians aren't as heroic to the average Brit as fighter pilots with metal legs.

It will Alan Turing's 100th birthday next year.

Wouldn't it wonderful if this remarkable man was celebrated?

C.

The Secret Life of Chaos /programmes/b00pv1c3 (shown in December on 大象传媒4) surely deserves another airing, sooner rather than later.

A brilliant man - but if you are going to mention Colossus you need to include Tommy Flowers - for it was he who built the beast!!

Turing's 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' proposed the experiment now known as the Turing Test, which set the bar for Artificial Intelligence. It has been a staple of philosophy and psychology courses for decades. His computing work was foundational, his mathematical computability proofs obscure but insightful, and his code-cracking vital but concealed. He was a true genius. It is all the more tragic that he was hounded to suicide by cultural prejudice and authoritarian bullying. I do hope any 'celebration' or exhibition highlights his suffering at the hands of the establishment. It is perhaps the most important lesson still to be learned from his life.

An absolute genius - and what a pity that the current attitudes to homosexuality were not prevalent at the time of his death. Let's hope that his abilities get the recognition they deserve.

'I sense that the name Alan Turing is still not that widely known...'

Err, you sense wrong. Most people who know anything about science or WWII know about Alan Turing. An old editor used to say to me 'Stick to the facts - its good stuff.'

#7 Thats kind of the problem... very few people really do know about WW2 or Science, including several members of the current govt who believed that both the USA & Russia were fighting alongside us in 1940. Virtually every Brit can tell you who Katie Price or Cheryl Cole are. I'd guess less than 1 in 100 can tell you who Alan Turing is.

Given that it is coming up the centenary of Turing's birth I would think it appropriate if, for at least part of 2012, a statue commemerating AT and the others at Station X is put up on the fourth plinth in Trafalger Square.

It is said that the reason the Apple logo has a bite taken out of it is in recognition of Alan Turing who apparently committed suicide by biting into a cyanide laced apple.

At 12:01pm on 25 Feb 2011, Llewellyn Wyn Jones wrote:
A brilliant man - but if you are going to mention Colossus you need to include Tommy Flowers - for it was he who built the beast!!

Tommy Flowers.........wasn't he the chap from the Post Office?

...no, seriously, I seem to recall that a diminuative, unlikely looking fellow, who did work for the GPO, helped (or DID) build the Colossus?

Outstanding. Quite outstanding.

Look at any device carrying the Apple symbol. This is based on Alan's chose method of suicide, an apple (with a bite out of it) laced with cyanide.

"So, it was wonderful to hear the news that a collection of rare papers relating to Turing's work as a scientist and code-breaker has been saved from disappearing overseas."

What this country did to Alan Turing (and countless others convicted of the "crime" of homosexuality) was unspeakable. Turing is one of the founding fathers of the modern computing age, and of course his efforts at Bletchley had a significant impact on the outcome of the war. Yet the same society he had worked so hard to protect arrested him because of his sexual orientation, convicted him and gave him a so-called "chemical castration"; he eventually committed suicide.

This country does not deserve any part of Alan Turing's legacy.

Flowers built Colossus, Turin wrote the algorythms for it. Both deserve to be remembered in equal measure.

At 12:01pm on 25 Feb 2011, Llewellyn Wyn Jones wrote:
A brilliant man - but if you are going to mention Colossus you need to include Tommy Flowers - for it was he who built the beast!!

Tommy Flowers.........wasn't he the chap from the Post Office?

...no, seriously, I seem to recall that a diminuative, unlikely looking fellow, who did work for the GPO, helped (or DID) build the Colossus?

Outstanding. Quite outstanding.

Yes Tommy Flowers worked at the GPO research station at Dollis Hill. It was he who designed and built Colossus - and funded some of the build from his own pocket!!!

It has always annoyed me that 1. he never did get the recognition he deserved!!, and 2. Colossus can be discussed without any reference to him at all!!

Rory Cellan-Jones.

"..I sense that the name Alan Turing is still not that widely known, particularly amongst today's school students."

they'd fit right in: "Last year a committee of MPs found that large numbers of England's adult working population remained functionally illiterate or innumerate - despite the government's 拢9bn Skills for Life programme."

My last exam of my university career was held in the Alan Turing building in Manchester. I also believe the novel Enigma by Robert Harris is loosely based on Turing in and around Bletchley Park.

Regardless of the statues, buildings and roads named after him in Manchester - where he actually didn't spend too great a deal of his life - people generally don't seem to have heard of him. At the least, they may have heard of him but have no idea of his significance in recent history.

I'd like to know more details about what the papers actually represent (eg 14 boxes of notes and paperwork) as the only picture I saw on the news was of a few offprints, which are pretty worthless as you could probably just go to the British Library and see the original journals there.
His bibliography would be well known, so what else did they actually pay that money for? I'm guessing lots of great things but to see the news it looked like very little!

@12: Apple and the logo designer have both denied that this is the case, which is why I put 'It is said' on my post (@10). Also the apple found next to Alan's body was never tested for cyanide (which is why I put apparently), but it is a common way of administering the poison and the apple had been bitten into.

Peter_Sym #1, #8.

"Cracking ENIGMA was an awesome advantage.."

your patriotic chest-beating detracts from the fact that the 'cracking', ie the analysis of the cipher and how to break it, was done by Polish mathematicians (Marian Rejewski (not sure about spelling) and his colleagues) before WWII:




Carniphage #2.

"Wouldn't it wonderful if this remarkable man was celebrated?"

they'll put him on a postage stamp (and no one will mention that he was driven to kill himself ;)).

opaqueentity #18.

"I'd like to know more details about what the papers actually represent (eg 14 boxes of notes and paperwork) as the only picture I saw on the news was of a few offprints, which are pretty worthless as you could probably just go to the British Library and see the original journals there."

yes, in an ideal society all such papers ought to be available to read online.

#20 A very fair point. I have massive respect for the Poles and feel their contribution in WW2 is criminally underplayed. Few people appreciate that the Polish squadrons during the battle of Britain shot down twice as many aircraft as any comparable RAF squadron. However cracking a code isn't enough... it has to be cracked quickly enough to do something with the information. Knowing where a U-boat was last week is worthless. Equally cracking enigma was far harder than simply understanding the cipher (and of course the Poles only got as far as a 3 rotor Enigma machine, not the 4 rotor the U-boats used or the far harder LORENZ cipher machine cracked by Colussus). Huge amounts of human intelligence went into cracking the codes quickly, including the crew of HMS Bulldog risking their lives to get some code books from a sinking U-boat.

Funny you thought my post was "patriotic chest-beating". I though quite the opposite. We've downplayed our immense military strength at the start of the war & exaggerated the power of Germany to cover up some spectacularly bad leadership and tactics. Us and the French should have been able to gut the Wehrmacht in 1939.

Incidentally while I also think Turing probably killed himself his death is quite ambiguous. There was no note, and he had poisonous chemicals all over the place in his lab. For a genius he was quite disorganised and sloppy at times. His death could have been both accident or even murder.

My mother's side of the my family were almost all lost at sea to the U-boats. Without Turing and the rest of station X Britain might have starved and we'd have certainly lost far more seamen & had a much longer war. For that reason alone I think the 4th plinth at Trafalgar square is really justified. We have statues of far more obscure Victorian generals in prime positions... time we put some real heroes on display

Churchill described Turing as one of our 'most valuable' people during the second world war, and he is also credited with shortening the war by as much as 2 years - Such a hero should be held on a par with figures such as Nelson (who also had a shady sexual past, so that should be no reason for Turing not to be publicly acclaimed).

"Homosexual mathematicians aren't as heroic to the average Brit as fighter pilots with metal legs."

What's his sexuality got to do with it? it had absolutely nothing to do with the great work he did for the country.

His work goes much beyond the war, his famous test (the Turing test) is still the de facto test to test if a computer can fool a human into thinking it is intelligent.

#25. So why are there movies about Douglas Bader (who was a bad tempered maniac) but none about Turing? It would appear that the average Brit isn't comfortable with a gay hero. The British establishment was so bothered by his sexuality that they chemically castrated him and stripped him of his security clearance.

I (happily married ex-soldier, current scientist & WW2 buff) on the other hand have no problem with people's sexuality and had a hilarious row with my grandfather when he argued that they didn't let gays in the army in his day (he didn't like the idea that as he was conscripted about 1 in 30 of his comrades would have been that way inclined). Turing was a hero who did more to save Europe from nazi-ism than any other. Plus in a fight I'd rather have Alexander the Great or Lawrence of Arabia backing me up than Douglas Bader!

I was one of the earliest signatures on the Downing street petition and made a point of bullying other people into signing it too.

You don't need to tell me about the Turing test either... its maybe his longest lasting legacy.

Turing's skills as a mathematician and computer scientist are amply discussed above. But not mentioned are his insights as a chemist. About a year before his death, he published a (35 page) article entitled "The Chemical basis of Morphogenesis" (DOI: ) which comes out of nowhere! Often, to find out where a scientist gets their inspiration, one looks to the list of other articles cited by them. Turing cites six other articles; five books and one research article, and none by him. It is his first (and probably only) foray into chemistry, but for that alone he is recognised as a fully paid up member of that profession, if not a Nobel prize winner in the subject.

25. At 4:10pm on 25 Feb 2011, Giles Jones wrote:
"Homosexual mathematicians aren't as heroic to the average Brit as fighter pilots with metal legs."

What's his sexuality got to do with it? it had absolutely nothing to do with the great work he did for the country.

His work goes much beyond the war, his famous test (the Turing test) is still the de facto test to test if a computer can fool a human into thinking it is intelligent.

>> I believe the earlier comment was ironic, and you are a computer.

A tragic tale of a true genius that the whole country should be grateful for - not only his WW2 work, but his contribution to computer science.

Sad to see some ignorant comments about Douglas Bader on here (and some 'what ifs' on WW2!?!) - he was a true example of how the human spirit can over come such adversity and triumph in situations that people with legs would find difficult(Pilot at war,POW for years, marriage!).

Two very different heroes of WW2 - both should be remembered equally as greats of that period.

Peter_Sym #22.

"Funny you thought my post was "patriotic chest-beating"."

must have been "..we were building twice as many ... or that our Navy ... our technology was far ahead..", but, perhaps, I misunderstood. ;)

"However cracking a code isn't enough... it has to be cracked quickly enough.."

agree, it was the mechanisation of the process, created by all the people drawn in from the GPO (and NAO!) and, of course, Turing, that made the difference.

fwiw, I think that his proofs re the Universal Turing Machine are his real legacy while the 'Turing Test' will probably be what we'll remember him for (though I have to admit that hadn't even heard about his chemistry paper. thanks Henry Rzepa (#27)).

28. At 4:43pm on 25 Feb 2011, Martin Constantinides wrote:
>> I believe the earlier comment was ironic, and you are a computer.

... either that, or his real name is Watson

Tom Flowers said he could build a machine fast enough to solve the problems Bletchley were having with the Fish code from the Lorenz machine.
It would involve electronic valves and the hierarchy at Bletchley were sceptical that such a machine could work. Tom flowers went back to the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill and with Sid Broadhurst and others designed and built the world's first electronic computer 'Colossus'.
"Turing had nothing to do with it" said Flowers when asked years later.
In fact Turing was in America at the time.
Flowers took his machine to Bletchley where it immediately proved to be capable of allowing messages between Hitler and his generals to be read.
It was so successful 10 other more powerful machines were built.
This was the machine that shortend the war by two years.
Churchill told Flowers after the war to burn all the design documents. He was given an MBE and 拢1,000 (which just about covered money he had put into the machine out of his own pocket). What could have been the UK basis for leading the electronic revolution passed to our American allies.
Turing was a mathematical genius. Tom Flowers was an electronic genius.

Colossus was Tommy Flowers' work - but Turing's work led to the electro-mechanical 'bombes', which could crack the Enigma codes in a useful timescale. Also it was Turing who had originally written to Churchill with the idea of using electronics for code-breaking. Churchill immediately approved funding.

Turing, Milner Barry, Alexander and Welchman wrote to Churchill in 1941 regarding funding for decyphering Enigma not Fish.
Welchman actively opposed Flowers suggested prolific use of scarce electronic valves and thought him not a very good electronics engineer.
There was a fairly bitter dispute about it and Gordon Radley at Dollis Hill told Flowers to go ahead anyway. So we nearly didn't get Colossus.

When celebrating Turing's work and highlighting the tragedy of his death, his revolutionary ideas on biological pattern formation and morphogenesis, towards the end of his life, often get ignored.

As well as his defining work on computers and artificial intelligence, his 1952 paper 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis' was so far advanced it took until the mid 70's for computational power to catch-up and prove his original theories right. Hence were born Turing Patterns.

In a century that is set to be dominated by biotechnology and the engineering of biological systems, I fully expect Turing's work to come into its own. I have little doubt it will underpin not only our new understanding of biology, but the basis on which to manipulate it and design with it in a rational way, never thought possible.

The man deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Newton, Einstein, Darwin and de Vinci. Just imagine where the world would be had AMT had another 40 year's to show us the way....

there is a statue of Alan Turing in Sackville Park in Manchester, when funding for said statue was being sort none of the major computer compananies would give a single penny towards it! they should hang their heads in shame!

The young Polish students who broke the Code: Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski, 3 brilliant math students at Poznan Uni. Polish customs intercepted and opened carefully a parcel from Germany to a Warsaw-based German company. It was an enigma machine. These three students photographed and copied pages of enclosed instructions. Customs carefully re-packaged and sent it with 48 hours. The students - many read German, organized a small radio maker to build one. Meanwhile Relewski was solving the many probs. Another break came when German cryptanalysis Hans Thilo Schmidt offered to sell Enigma info to French intelligence. With shrewd guesses Rejewski established how the machine worked. In 1938 he built another machine. In England 1939 Rekewski and Zygalski arrived and were frozen out, assigned to decoding low level ciphers. Turing did vital work, but these young brilliant students who spoke little English were treated disgustingly by the Brit establishment. Give credit were it's justly deserved Mr. Jones.

I have an interest in computing and over the years I watched a few 'Turing' documentaries and I know my WWII in general but the information provided in the comments above is astonishing.

Thank you.

#1 - I had no idea that the reason security remained tight even after the war was because the machines were still being used.

However, I had thought that Bletchley ceased to be a secret sometime in the eighties 鈥� and not the 70's.

My mother was a young Wren at Bletchley during the war and was one of those responsible for programming the Bombes. She did not divulge this to anyone, including family (although not sure if she told my father) until the story broke when someone decided to publish a book about it - I think he did this from Australia so that he could escape the censorship laws over here 鈥� and suddenly the story was in all the press. My recollection is that this was sometime in the eighties.

In fact, she never even told her father, who was a Captain in the army at the time and frequently asked her what she was working on. He was most put out that she would not divulge anything to him, as he was security cleared and this was still an issue between them until he died - which was before the book was published. It just goes to show what effect the security training had on them.

My Mother was so proud of what she had been involved in during the war, albeit in a humble way. I am very glad that I took her to see Bletchley before she died. They were in the process of trying to reconstruct the machines used during the war. When I mentioned to our tour guide that my Mother had worked there during the war, she was whisked away from us and taken to see Tony Sale, I think, who asked her if she would write down everything she could remember about the machines, as their knowledge was still a bit sketchy. Along with drawings produced by my father, her recollections were sent to them soon after.

I remember a story, perhaps from my mother, that the Americans forced Churchill to have all the machines and blueprints destroyed. Apparently, the lake at Bletchley was emptied and then a hole was dug, into which they put the smashed up remains of the machines. This was then covered in concrete and the lake refilled. Does anyone know if this is true and why it was done?

I agree with all the comments about Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers and the Poles. Perhaps there should be a campaign to have a memorial to all of them - it was such a major achievement and had such a profound influence on the course of the war and beyond.

Rory, on the contrary, most students these days are likely to know about Turing given the importance of computing and related studies in schools. My generation and before on the other hand (from the 80's) are unlikely to know about it unless they studied some form of computer science in university or read some well-researched obscure spy novel!

Kudos though to Dr Sue Black for bringing attention to this - a lot of this history will die as the technology space progresses so quickly!

There is an excellent play called 'Breaking the Code' all about Alan Turing which was adapted for television by the 大象传媒 in the mid 90's. The play and the TV drama featured Derek Jacobi as Alan Turing. Look out for it if you can - maybe the 大象传媒 could re-schedule it?

@40 Anna Sempe

My 13 year-old daughter was certainly taught about Alan Turing.

She also knew of Charles Babbage, but hadn't heard of his associate and probable author of the first ever computer program, Ada Lovelace.

We don't give our science and technology heroes the recognition they deserve in the UK. Compare that to the US where they named a warship after Grace Hopper (USS Hopper DDG-70, known to her crew as the Amazing Grace)

She was a Rear Admiral, of course, and its not uncommon for Navies to name ships after deceased admirals (USS Nimitz, HMS Hood), though the US use it to honour the recently deceased rather than historical figures.

@Eponymous Cowherd
The new computing lab at Bath Uni is named the Lovelace laboratory :).

Although I do hugely agree that we don't give people what they deserve. And its sad really considering what Brits have done for computing and the like. We have a huge history in things like Video Games which is often ignored. And even in modern times, you can quite legitimately argue that Apple would not be as successful if it wasn't for a brit.

Hugh Sebag-Montefiore wrote a good book with extensive appendices so you could read the story with or without the complicated explanations for the code cracking.
The comment about 25 being a computer, genius.
With respect to the Apple logo, lazy research but some sources say it represents the biblical apple from the tree of life, another attributed to the original designer Janoff, the 鈥渂ite鈥� in the Apple logo was originally implemented so that people would know that it represented an apple, and not a tomato. An interview with Janoff suggests he bought a bag of apples an started to mess about with them to see what he could come up with. The reference to Alan Turing seems more like an internet myth since.

i have not visted for a while.but i hav'nt missed much.this is the only thing worth a comment.turing a giant of the scientific world was the main man at bletchely park.he and the team saved thousands of lives by decoding enigma which led to him creating a computer.it was destroyed on churchils orders after the war.his treatment after the war by our goverment strictly on his sexuall preferance was appalling, we should feel a sense of shame at his treatment.in my opinion a war hero.he was not just a code breaker he was a true scientific mathmatician, a great man....