Happy 96th, Alan Turing!
Robert D sez,
Link (Thanks, Robert!)Today would have been the 96th birthday of cryptologist, mathematician and father of almost everything digital Alan Turing. That he was persecuted for his homosexuality to the point of suicide is a crime and a tragedy.
Remember today the man who, more than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, is the reason you are now sitting at a computer, reading this very sentence.
ALAN MATHISON TURING
23 June, 1912 - 7 June, 1954
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Most appropriate middle name of all time.
As a friend once wrote about about the "In Our Time" episode about the Fibonacci sequence,
"...And no mention of the remarkable biological work on Fibonacci and morphogenesis by Alan Turing, cut short when he was hounded to suicide by a homophobic British state apparatus, which offered him prison or an oestrogen implant in his thigh."
In Manchester there is a satue of Turing on a bench holding an apple, he ate a poisoned apple to kill himself, every last penny was paid by the gay communty of the city.
The City fathers refused to stump up a brass farthing.
After half a century of supposed progress, for the father of digital computing to be so snubbed in this way is unforgiveable.
At the very least, they got the museum at Bletchley Park sorted out and giving credit where due. It's still on my todo list, though...
If you don't quite know who Turing is or what Turing machine are, Charles Petzold just wrote a book called The Annotated Turing. It's the entire paper put into mathematical and historical context.
http://www.theannotatedturing.com/
in another 100 years we'll see a time when not only will you not be persecuted for being homosexual, but you can also marry an artificial intelligence (as long as its advanced enough to pass that one test... what was it called?)
I painted him with Snow White and an apple a couple of years back.
Turing & Snow White
shardcore
"Remember today the man who, more than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, is the reason you are now sitting at a computer, reading this very sentence."
And also one of the reasons it's not in German.
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don't ask, don't tell. rumor has it that Richard Lionheart was an nancy boy too?
Let's also not forget that he did more to hasten the end of the Eastern front for World War II than every single soldier combined.
I imagine a world with another 40 or 50 years of Turing, all the things he could have developed, and it's just so sad that it's gone because of a bunch of xenophobes in power.
A very merry unbirthday!
Turing needs so much more respect than he gets, we owe him so much.
Curiously, I wrote a comment and it isn't appearing in this list, but is appearing in my personal-comment-list and in the side-bar and (weirder) even here when I click "preview" on this comment. But not in the main list when I reload it.
If it eventually appears, ignore this comment, if not: W E I R D !
Ok, ignore it.. :D
rAmen.
Back in 1987 while I was still an Army cryptologyst, my wife and I saw Breaking the Code at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
I fully share the views of Sir Derek Jacobi, who, in the 14 February 2002 issue of the Independent newspaper, said:
Rest in peace you kind noble man.
Nice one, Insect Hooves.
Shardcore, I've fixed your link. You needed double quotes around the URL. Nice piece of art, btw.
Also, in future could you please leave out the .sig line? We're not big on those.
As it was said before, he's the reason we're not reading this in German. Perhaps, even, the reason we're still able to read this. Without this brilliant man we wouldn't have cracked the Enigma code, especially the four rotor models, period. PERIOD. Without the cracking of that code the war would have dragged on (best case) or have been lost altogether (more likely case). Alan Turing is a hero and the fact that he "comitted suicide" over the fact that his homosexuality was seen as a security/clearance issue is profoundly stupid and, in fact, fairly evil. The man helped free the world from the grip of the Nazis and all they could think about when all was said and done was that he was a security risk. Feh. Note that his work with the Enigma was classified until the early 90s. Clearly a brilliant man, who knows what other secrets he would have unlocked had he lived?
rumor has it that Richard Lionheart was a nancy boy too?
Rumor has it that Philip II of France was sharpening his sword. If you want to call a bad-ass motherfucker like Richard a nancy boy, let me get out of the way first. He might want to give you some vocabulary lessons.
Matmos should re-release their wonderfull "For Alan Turing" ep in celebration, then maybe I'd be able to get a copy !!!
Cory-
In case you read these, I had a question about Turing. In "Little Brother," you mention that Marcus received a great biography of Turing, and yet I've never really been satisfied with any of the biographies I've seen. Is there a best one that I'm missing?
Anybody who's not Cory, feel free to suggest biographies as well, of course!
Both Turing and Godel were big fans of Disney's Snow White, owned the film, and died from eating poison. From a previous BB post by Xeni:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/26/turing-pumpkin.html
Erm, scratch that about ol' Kurt. He only thought his food was poisoned and wasted away.
Why hasn't anyone made a feature film about Turing yet? It really is a fascinating story with an incredibly ironic ending. It always amazes me how few people outside of nerdsville actually know who he was, what he did and how it really turned the war and how he was "rewarded" for it in the end.
@ Adam Weiss -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157583/
It's not bad, but one expects better from Tom Stoppard and Michael Apted.
from the Enigma plot synopsis (link above): A young genius frantically races against time to crack an enemy code and solve the mystery surrounding the woman he loves...
...something wrong here. I liked the character of Alan Turing in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, but although I've read enough on Enigma/Bletchley Park to know some of his story I've never read a bio on Turing. So I, too, am eager for recommendations.
That's just wonderful. They change the name, change his character and completely remove the most interesting part.
So lets review: after he saved the western world, the British government sentenced him to "corrective therapy" for his homosexuality which consisted of stripping his security clearance and compulsory estrogen shots. After he grew boobs, he "mysteriously" died of poison ingestion.
Fast forward 60 years, a movie is made about him, where they swap his sexual orientation around to something more palatable and turn the whole thing into a love story. It really kind of reeks of an even more ironic final insult if you ask me...
There's a reason that Tolkien called it "the lidless eye of Hollywood". Do you know how many movies have been 'straightened up'?
I'm just happy they haven't been able to get their hooks into any Pratchett (yet)
The odd thing is, they probably could and would have made an accurate film of his life in the 50s or 60s. Various Tennessee Williams' plays, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Reflections in a Golden Eye, in other words anything starring Richard Burton and/or Elizabeth Taylor all treated controversial subject matter fairly frankly. We may have less censorship now, but no studio suit today would approve those projects because they don't have broad appeal.
"broad appeal" = "done before, many,many times"
@ Adam Weiss
Actual story from Hugh Whitemore, author of "Breaking the Code" (a play about Turing's life):
"Finally, as an epilogue, let me tell you what happened when the play was in Washington, at the Kennedy Center. It had been a great success. Leonard Bernstein had prostrated himself in homage before Derek Jacobi. I was in my hotel room, enjoying a brief moment of triumph. The phone rang. It was a leading Hollywood producer. "Your play is a masterpiece," he said, "get on a plane and we'll talk about making it into a motion picture." And he named a colossal sum as a potential fee. Riches, at last, seemed to beckon. "Just two things," he said. "What's that?" I asked. "I don't want this guy to be a *gay-bashing slur removed!* and for God's sake cut out all the mathematics."
Hollywood hurts my brain sometimes, it really does...
(Although I'm curious as to how the producers were planning on doing an adaptation of "Breaking the Code" without math or a gay protagonist.)
It's really sad that on a "Happy 96th, Alan Turing" birthday post, homophobic adolescent slurs like #10 Mikolotus's above--"nancy boy"--are neither deleted, disemvoweled or challenged, except for Antinous's response.
Wait. The most interesting part of his life was that he was gay? I don't think so. You're missing the big picture, I believe.
@ Moon
Puh-leeaze. Either you missed the point or thought you could get away with throwing up a little straw man there.
My point is, the most interesting part of his life is that he was persecuted, basically to death, by the very government which owes it's endurance to his achievements.
"I am the father of the modern digital computer and I threw the war for the allied forces and all I got was my lab taken away and this lousy set of boobs."
I do remember reading something somewhere once...it was theorized with at least SOME backing evidence that Turing was in point of fact murdered and the suicide faked. That would fit with the British Intelligence mentality at the time -they did freely use torture and murder without oversight. Have to scratch around a little.
ah
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/02/06/060206crbo_books
B Dagger Lee,
I chose not to delete or disemvowel 'nancy boy' because I haven't heard it used outside of sketch comedy in decades. I assumed that it was being used ironically, particularly in reference to one of history's fiercest warrior kings.
yeah, I figured that too.
Of course, I'll accept you guys' judgement on it, though as far as I know it's still a slur in England; I still think it's sad that it would be on Turing's birthday card (so to speak), however ironically. Since "don't ask, don't tell," is still in effect, the comment reads adolescent to me, but perhaps it's just so ironic as to be gnomic.
depends who says it, to who they say it to,how they say, where they say and why they are saying it.
Speaking of nancy boys, here's my not very good shot of my wife Nancy with the Turing statue in Sackville Park in Manchester last September: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fnarf/1572857115/ . We made a special nighttime pilgrimage to see it. Turing is a great hero of mine, and his story -- injected with hormones after saving the nation -- is one of the colossal tragedies of our age.
Neither Microsoft now Apple nor Intel nor Motorola nor any other computer company saw fit to donate a penny for this memorial, or any other. Disgusting.
kinda pisses me off too. If then a prophet hath no honour in his own land, who will stand forth and put up a monument where he is acknowledged? I'll kick in. How about a Turing scholarship for young and gay computer students?
That would be a beautiful thing, Takuan.
How do you go about setting up a thing like that? We've got four years til his 100th.
@#36
"I am the father of the modern digital computer and I threw the war for the allied forces...."
What does "threw" mean here, please?
The Turing scholarship is a GREAT idea! Truly. I'm in.
you need a credible core sponsor - which should NOT be a gay rights organization, that is the whole point of this disgrace; the statue in the park received NO funds except from the gay community. It should come from IBM, Microsoft, someone who has hugely profited from the computer age. Or the Crown.
I haven't even looked, I wouldn't be surprised if a Turing scholarship or ten doesn't already exist, but I bet they will all ignore the fact of him being killed by the people he helped save because of his sexuality.
I've done a little asking around, and the name Tim Gill came up. He's a wealthy computer pioneer and gay activist who has a gay rights foundation. But I agree; THIS shouldn't come from gay rights, it should come from the computing industry. Microsoft has 80,000 employees; you'd think there might be one or two shirtlifters* among them.
* oh, lighten up, it's a joke, it's funny!
yeah, but none of them read BB because of all the cruel things said about Vista
right, blame me...
:)