The Truth of Alan Turing

Alan Turing may or may not be the name of a person you are knowledgeable of. Turing is a very popular scientist and is credited for his work during World War II. Now, I know this blog post is about the hidden figures in history and it may seem odd to choose Turing, who even has a movie written about his life. However, his truth was hidden from the public during his time.

Alan Turing was born on June 23,1912 in London, England. He studied at King’s College, or the University of Cambridge, and was elected a fellow at the school. He delivered a paper in 1936 “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”. This paper was a presentation of the idea of a universal machine, later called the “Turing machine”. The Turing machine is credited in the modern world to be the precursor to the modern computer. After he completed his Ph.D. From Princeton University in 1938, he took a part-time position with the Government Code and Cypher School. This position was at a British code-breaking organization.

During World War II, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, a wartime station. He was a part of a group of five mathematicians and the group is credited with being the first to decode the messages being sent between U-boats. These messages held the daily communications of the submarines and their placement. These advantages allowed Allied ships to safely evade the U-boats. However, Turing’s time at Bletchley Park is mostly remembered by his creation “the bombe” and how it decoded Enigma, a German machine that would transmit messages in morse code. Decoding Enigma was a top priority at Bletchley and Turing took the challenge. The bombe machine he created would search through different possible positions of the internal wheels of Enigma. It would look for a pattern of keyboard-to-lamp connections that turned the coded letters into plain German. Turing’s machine was a turning point of the war because the Allies had the advantage of intercepting communications of the Axis powers. High-speed Bombes were placed into the United States and Britain. The War on Enigma was finally in the Allies’ hands.

The accomplishments of Alan Turing continued far past his creation of the Bombe. However, Turing’s opportunity to do his work in Bletchley was ripped away from him when he admitted to his homosexuality in 1952. The police reported to his house in response to a break-in and that was when he admitted his sexuality. During this time, homosexuality was illegal and Turing was arrested. As punishment, Turing chose to be on temporary probation with the condition that he receive hormonal treatment for libido reduction. He went under castration through injections of synthetic estrogen hormones for about a year, it was his cause of impotence. 

Even though Turing chose temporary probation, his clearance for Bletchley Park was taken away and was barred from continuing his work on cryptography. 

Alan Turing died on June 7, 1954, two years after his arrest. His death is believed to be a suicide. This conclusion was displayed by the autopsy showing four ounces of what seemed to be cyanide. When his body was found, so were the remains of a single apple, but no traces of apple were found in the autopsy. The investigators of his death never got the apple tested for cyanide and Turing did not provide any suggestions in his writings that he was suicidal for the days before his death. Some assume it was an accident because Turing kept doses of poison for research in his spare room.

Alan Turing was a very brilliant man, who helped his country and their allies in an admirable way. His work remains influential to this day. However, his career and lifelong work was diminished by the ignorant precedent of his time. His life and freedom were taken away because of a stigmatized lifestyle. Alan Turing is more than his sexuality. He was a man of great capability and I will always admire his commitment to his country, even when they turned their back on him.

You may not believe Turing was hidden in history, but I believe he was. Alan Turing was forced to be something he was not. All in an effort to fit into his time and to keep a job he was passionate about. He tried for a very long time to hide his truth from his peers and the public. Turing may not have been behind the scenes in Bletchley Park, but his truth was hidden as a way to survive the scrutiny of the public and the government.

Alan Turing is a hidden figure in history.