Alan Turing – How the mathematician and computer scientist helped win WW2
THE work of mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing is said to have shortened the Second World War by four years.
His work should have meant he was hailed as a national hero but instead he was hounded for his sexuality. Here’s what you need to know about him.
When was Alan Turing born?
Alan Turing was born on June 1912 in Maida Vale, London and from an early age it was clear that he was highly intelligent.
When he was nine, his both his primary school headmistress and his secondary school maths teacher declared him to be a “genius” in reports.
He passed the time by working out complex chess problems on his own, according to the British Library.
Teachers were often annoyed with him for his high marks in exams despite him paying little attention during lessons.
Where was he educated and what standard of runner was he?
Turing began studying mathematics at King's College Cambridge, in 1931 and graduated in 1934 with a first class degree
During his time at university he enjoyed an active social life, took up rowing and became an excellent long distance runner.
Later in life he finished fifth in qualifying for the 1948 London Olympics with a time of 2 hours 46.03 minutes which for the day was very respectable.
He continued to compete for Walton athletic club until forced to stop by injury.
After graduating from Cambridge he obtained a PhD in mathematics at Princeton University in 1938.
It was at Princeton that he developed the notion of a “universal computing machine” which could solve complex calculations.
Later this would become known as the Turing machine, which foreshadowed the digital computer.
At Princeton he also studied cryptology codes and cyphers which can be used to send secret messages.
How did his work Second World War?
Turing was asked join the Government Codes and Cypher School, a code-breaking organisation which is now known as GCHQ.
The organisation moved to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, which became the top secret home of Britain’s code breakers.
He was based in the famous Hut 8 and his most notable achievement at Bletchley was cracking the German’s ‘Enigma’ code.
The Enigma was a machine used by the German armed forces to send encrypted messages securely.
Together with fellow code-breaker Gordon Welchman, developed a machine called the Bombe which from late 1940 was decoding all messages sent by the Enigma machines.
Turing’s team also cracked complex German naval signals in 1941, contributing to Allied victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.
His other work included developing a machine to encode and decode voice communications.
What happened after the war, how did he die and what is ‘Turing’s Law’?
Turing was as awarded an OBE for his services to the country in 1945 and made deputy director of the Computing Laboratory at Manchester University.
He continued to producing ground breaking work including his famous paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” which was published in 1950.
Turing was gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain.
In January 1952 he began a relationship with Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old unemployed man.
Later that month, Turing reported a burglary to the police and Murray told him that the perpatrator was an acquaintance of his.
During the investigation he acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray.
Turing was charged with gross indecency and convicted under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.
He pleaded guilty and opted for chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones.
The scientist was rendered impotent and his security clearance was removed barring him for continuing his code breaking work for GCHQ.
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Turing died two years later from cyanide poisoning in an apparent suicide - though there have been suggestions his death was an accident.
In 2013 he was officially pardoned thanks to a campaign backed by MPs and celebrities like Professor Stephen Hawking, Stephen Fry and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Thousands of other gay and bisexual men convicted of consensual same-sex relationships were also posthumously pardoned under what became known as ‘Turing’s Law’.
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