The Fall and Rise of Alan Turing

He was a mathematical genius and computer science pioneer, but also a gay British man back in the days when homosexuality was against the law.  Tragically, publicly humiliated after a criminal conviction, and suffering from deep depression, he committed suicide on June 7, 1954 at the age of 41. On that day one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, a patriot who had played a key role in defeating the Nazis and saving thousands of lives in the Second World War, was lost forever.

Alan Turing

Who was he?  To be honest, twenty years ago I would probably not have heard of him myself, but today he is one of my heroes.  In case you have been living on a desert island for the last ten years, perhaps I should mention that I am talking about Alan Turing, Englishman, a mathematics professor, a World War II code-breaker, and a pioneer of computer science. 

In the 1930s Turing worked at Cambridge University in the UK and at Princeton University in the US. At this time he developed the idea for a proto-computer known as a Turing Machine, a hypothetical device not intended for practical use, but which was key to helping computer scientists understand the possibilities of mechanical computation.

Enigma

 His knowledge and love of mathematics led to a fascination with cryptography, and he was recruited to work part-time for the British Secret Service at the Government Code and Cypher School. During the war he became a key member of staff at the top-secret Bletchley Park establishment, and led the team that in 1939 developed the code-breaking electro-mechanical machine known as Bombe. 

The Bombe Code-Breaker

This invention gave the British government an enormous advantage over Germany and the Axis relatively early on in the war. The German military establishment was using an ingenious machine called Enigma to encrypt their military communication. 

So confident were they that the Enigma Code could not be broken, they used it for all sorts of communications on the battlefield, at sea, in the sky and, significantly, within their secret services.   In fact, thanks to Turing’s Bombe, the British were able to read and understand these vital messages; an advantage which is thought to have shortened hostilities by years, and saved may lives.

He later played a vital role in the development of Colossus, the world’s first large-scale electronic digital computer, which was designed by engineer Tommy Flower, and also used by the Bletchley Park code-breakers.

Bletchley Park and the Official Secrets Act

The British Official Secrets Act meant the Alan Turing and Bletchley Park story was kept under wraps until many years later. At the end of the war, much of the Bombe and Colossus equipment and their blueprints was destroyed on Winston Churchill’s orders. It was only in the 1970s that its work was finally made public.  In fact, during the Second World War, Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, was the site of the United Kingdom's main decryption establishment.

The people who worked there all signed the Official Secrets Act, swearing never to talk about the site and the sensitive intelligence activities which were planned there, and most of them took the secret to the grave.  At the time, to most of the staff it was simply known as ‘BP’, although the Wrens (Women's Royal Naval Service personnel) stationed there referred to it as HMS Pembroke V.  These days Bletchley Park has been turned into a museum, but one of its cover names, Government Communications Headquarters, still lives on in the present-day British intelligence centre GCHQ at Cheltenham.

The Post-War Era

In the years following the war Turing's security clearance was withdrawn: homosexuals were considered a bad security risk as they were vulnerable to blackmail, so he could no longer work for British Intelligence. Eventually, in 1952, he was arrested and tried for homosexuality, then a criminal offence. To avoid prison, he submitted to a year-long regime of oestrogen injections, a process popularly known as ‘chemical castration’, which was intended to neutralise his libido.

Then the tide began to turn.  Social attitudes changed over time, gradually becoming more liberal.   The law against homosexual acts in the UK was repealed in 1967 by The Sexual Offences Act.   Late in 2013 Alan Turing received an official royal pardon.  That is fine as far as it goes, but since homosexuality is no longer an offence, why should he be pardoned?  Surely it would be far more appropriate if Alan Turing’s family, friends and supporters could find it in their hearts to pardon the British government for unjustly criminalising him in the first place!  

Sir Alan Turing?

I know, I know, the ‘royal pardon’ is a legal formality, and maybe it does have a value in publicly ‘wiping the slate clean’.  I am only happy that we now live in a more open and enlightened society where people are not marginalised, hounded and barred from fully participating in society due to their colour, creed, gender or sexual orientation.  That’s the theory, anyway.

Now, not content with the pardon alone, many of Alan Turing’s admirers and supporters are now campaigning for him to be given a posthumous knighthood. Many years ago I worked as an Analyst Programmer, and Alan Turing is the most inspiring role model I can think of for anyone working in IT. Since 1966, the Turing Award has been given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery for technical or theoretical contributions to the computing community. It is widely considered to be the computing world's highest honour, equivalent to the Nobel Prize. I am very proud to include him here in my roll-call of honorary Geeks.

Footnote:-

Benedict Cumberbatch will play the role of Alan Turing in a forthcoming bio-pic called The Imitation Game, directed by Morten Tyldum with screenplay by Graham Moore, due to be released in 2014.