We can only see a short distance ahead

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."

Today marks the centenary of one of the most fascinating of gay men, the mathematical genius Alan Turing - famed as the breaker of the Nazis' Enigma Code, and father of the modern computer and of the scientific theory of "artificial intelligence".

His story is well known - a genius with possible signs of Asperger's Syndrome, a typical "boffin", all crumpled suits and illegible handwriting, and a gay man hounded to death by the very authorities in peacetime that his war effort had fought to save. Much is being made in the press of his personal contribution to current science, and many are the efforts to get his reputation officially recognised and his abysmal criminal treatment as a gay man pardoned. And well they should!

However, Alan Turing's complex personal life is a subject of many theories and speculations. His place as a gay icon is assured - this year's Manchester Pride (25th August 2012) theme is Queer'd Science, in honour of the "father of computer science, mathematician, logician, wartime codebreaker and victim of prejudice."

His homosexuality does indeed appear pivotal to his subsequent emergence as a brilliant scientist. The death of his schoolmate and first love Christopher Morcom ("He made everyone else seem so ordinary") appears to have been a central factor in Alan’s subsequent development. Shaken by the unexpected loss, he rejected the religion of his parents and his school, and thus began a lifelong dedication to atheism and logical scientific analysis.


Drawing of Alan Turing ("Hockey. Or Watching the daisies grow") by his mother at his preparatory school, Hazelhurst, Sussex. Annotated by Mrs Turing "sent to Miss Dunwall, matron at Hazelhurst. Date Spring term 1923."

Although often depicted as the "passive victim", Mr Turing's surprising defiance in the face of persecution is excellently analysed by the author of Alan Turing: the enigma Andrew Hodges:

[His]... self-effacement, mixed with a dark hint that he had actually contributed something better than "donkey work" to the [development of the] computer, typified the cryptic way he spoke of himself.

In this era, most people who heard on the grapevine of [his] story probably assumed that his death typified the suicide culturally expected of ashamed and exposed homosexuals.

In fact, his death came more than two years after the arrest. And he had shown defiance rather than shame.

He told the police that he thought there was "a Royal Commission sitting to legalise it".

In 1952 and again in 1953 he insisted on holidays abroad, in Norway and Greece, explicitly for freedom from British law, and very likely influenced by hearing of the early Scandinavian gay movement. His ears pricked up at a hint of modernity.

But as a gay man, Turing was particularly unlucky. The point in about 1948 when he decided to have a more positive gay life was just the point when there was a change from silence to active persecution...

...Turing's cryptology work at Bletchley Park helped counter the threat posed by Germany's U-boats These changes, taken together, have made Turing much more accessible than he could ever have been in his lifetime. He has become, posthumously, a modern icon.

Alan Turing drank the cyanide but left an apple by his bed.

It was a grim joke against his reputation for impracticality, kindly allowing those who wanted to believe it that he had ingested the poison by mistake.

Turing himself knew the apple as an icon of death in the Snow White story, and perhaps his theatrical prop was also alluding to the great decision he made in 1938 to abandon the Eden of pure mathematics for the deadly business of duelling with Nazi Germany.

His story is tragic, but this last twist to his story is part of the comedy of life which, despite everything, he did his best to enjoy.

Amen to that.

Let's leave the last word to Dr James Grime, Enigma Project Officer at Cambridge University, who provides (for me at least) possibly the clearest explanation of exactly what contribution Alan Turing's work made to the world of mathematics and computer science. A fitting tribute to the life of a genius:

Alan Turing: celebrating the life of a genius

Alan Turing website

More Alan Turing on the BBC