Alan Turing

Like many, I know Alan Turing for his mathematics and cryptology, and especially for his invaluable role in WWII for cracking the Nazi’s enigma code.

Wikipedia says:

Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. He provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. In 1999 Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, stating: “The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.”

During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

What I did not know is that Turing was gay, and he was effectively castrated in 1952 for being gay. Turing had a brief consensual relationship with an Arnold Murray, who then broke into his house with an accomplice and robbed it. The Police investigated and when the homosexual relationship between Turing and Murray became evident, charged Turing with gross indecency.

He was convicted and given a choice between imprisonment, or chemical castration via oestrogen hormone injections.  Two years later he killed himself.

How appalling that this happened just 50 or so years ago in a so called civilised society. And to a man whose genius helped the Allies win WWII.

This has become topical due to a petition posed on the 10 Downing Street website calling for justice for Turing. This led to an official response from Gordon Brown who said:

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Thank God the vast majority of people no longer think it should be a crime to be gay, let alone that castration is an appropriate treatment.