Alan Turing, Code Breaker and Marathon Runner

[gray_marian]

Alan Turing - Celebrating the life of a genius - YouTube

Two of the most important people responsible for an allied victory during World War II were Winston Churchill and Alan Turing. They saved the free world from domination by Nazi Germany, yet after the war, the British rewarded these brave, patriotic, and gifted men by voting Churchill out of office and by convicting Alan Turing of the crime of being a homosexual, and forcing him to take female hormones that may have killed him at the very young age of 41.

Churchill’s role in the war is well known. He single-handily prevented England from surrendering to Nazi Germany when even the King of England recommended capitulation. Turing saved England from defeat by breaking the Nazi Enigma code, yet this extraordinary act was kept secret until 1974 because of national security procedures. After Turing broke the Enigma code, the British were able to intercept messages from the German high command to be able to locate the dreaded U-Boat submarines and know about battle plans in advance. The Nazis never realized that their code had been broken, so their overwhelming military superiority was repeatedly foiled by the British. Turing’s code-breaking work was so far ahead of the rest of the world and so crucial to British security that it was not released to the United Kingdom National Archives until April 2012, seventy years after it was written and 48 years after he died.

Ground-Breaking Genius
Alan Turing was one of the most brilliant and creative mathematicians of the 20th century. He invented the “Turing Machine” which makes him a father of modern-day computers and one of the inventors of artificial intelligence. After World War II, he designed the ACE, among the first stored-program computers. In 1948 he helped develop the Manchester computers. He was a breakthrough mathematician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, pioneering computer scientist, mathematical biologist, and later in his short life, he became a very good marathon runner.

At age six, his teachers noted that he was exceptionally smart. At age 13, he designed his own scientific experiments and solved advanced math problems that his math teacher couldn’t even understand. At 16, he wrote about and discussed Einstein’s questions about Newton’s laws of motion. At age 21, he was graduated from Cambridge University, with highest honors in mathematics. At age 22, he became one of the youngest men to receive the honor of being elected a fellow at Cambridge because he proved the central limit theorem. At age 23, he presented the theory that led to the world’s first mathematical computation computers called the Universal Turing machine, published advances in mathematics and cryptology and made a multiplier machine. In June 1938, at age 25, he received his PhD from Princeton.

The day after war was declared in 1939, Turing left Cambridge for Bletchley Park, Britain’s intelligence center, where he broke the German’s Enigma Code. An intercepted Enigma message’s English translation could be read by the British command in less than 15 minutes after the Germans had sent it. German U-boats had been sinking many of the merchant ships in convoys from North America loaded with food and essential supplies. With the Enigma code broken, the Allies knew just where most of the U-Boats were, so the convoys could get through. The military advantages gained by breaking the Enigma code probably shortened the war by two or three years and saved more than 20 million lives.

An Outstanding Runner Too
Turing started running after the war while he was in his thirties and in August 1946, at age 33, he won his first race, a three miles track title in 15:37.8. Averaging five minutes and 12 seconds per mile is a very fast time for a beginner. Later that month, he won a three-mile handicap race in 15:20, the 20th fastest time by a Briton that year. That is pretty impressive for a 33-year-old novice who had never been an athlete. On October 26th, in a five-kilometer race, he was only six seconds behind Alec Olney who represented England in the Olympic 5000 meters two years later. On December 21, he was less than 30 seconds behind Geoff Iden, an Olympic marathon runner in 1952. In April, 1947. he ran 10 miles in 54:43 to beat several former and future Olympians. After just two years of running, and while doing important research on computers and code breaking, he would run 40 miles from his lab at Bletchley Park to London to attend meetings.

He hoped to make the 1948 British Olympic team in the marathon, but was injured before the tryouts. I can tell you that all men who start to compete in marathons in their later years are prone to severe injuries. You have to run a lot of very fast miles to be a good marathon runner and it takes years for a person to learn how to take days off. All marathon runners suffer days when they should not run, but it takes lots of injuries to learn when to take off. They compete with their diaries and try to record as many miles as possible. So they get near the end of a week and their legs hurt so much that they can barely walk, but they need to run 20 miles that day to reach 100 miles for that week. They do run the 20 miles, but they run them so slowly that day that they gain nothing and end up with an injury that often takes months to heal.

I had the same problem and was always injured. On one day, athletes take a very hard workout that damages their muscles. On the next day, they feel sore which is a signal to go slower. I used to compete with my diary to see how many miles I could run each week. It took years for me to learn that when my legs feel stiff and heavy, I should not run at all. Turing ran a marathon in a very respectable time that was only 11 minutes slower than the 2 hours and 35 minutes that it took Britain’s Thomas Richards to finish second in the 1948 Olympic marathon. He continued competing until 1950 when another leg injury ended his running career.

Homosexuality Was a Crime in Britain
In 1941, Turing proposed marriage to Joan Clarke, a brilliant mathematician who worked with him decoding German secrets. He told her that he was a homosexual and she still wanted to marry him. However, he changed his mind and did not marry her. In December, 1951, 39-year-old Turing met a 19-year old man named Arnold Murray outside a theater and invited him to lunch, and they started an affair. On January 23, 1952, several articles were stolen from Turing’s home and Murray told Turing that the burglar was a friend of his. Turing called the police. The police came and asked why Turing and Murray were living together and Turing replied that they had a sexual relationship. At that time, the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 made homosexuality a criminal act, so they both were charged with the crime of being homosexuals.

Turing’s lawyer convinced him to plead guilty, even though Turing felt that he had done nothing wrong. He was found guilty and given a choice of being put in prison or taking a year of injections of a type of estrogen, a female hormone, to reduce his sexual desire. The criminal conviction caused him to lose his security clearance and his consulting job with the British Government. He also lost his passport to the United States.

Death by Suicide or Accident?
On June 8, 1954, Turing was found dead on his bed with a partially-eaten apple beside him. His autopsy revealed that he had died of cyanide poisoning and his death was ruled a suicide. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered. The police did not test the apple for cyanide. If they had found cyanide in the apple, it would be very likely that he committed suicide, but since the apple was not checked, he could have died accidentally. Turing kept a bottle of potassium cyanide to dissolve gold for electroplating experiments. Turing’s autopsy findings suggest that he inhaled the cyanide. So he could have died of accidental inhalation of cyanide, rather than the willful action of having eaten it in an apple. His friends reported that he was not despondent and had written a list of things he had to do in his lab the next few days.

Nobody Knew About Turing’s Contribution Until After His Death
When Turing died in 1954 none of his friends knew that he had broken the Enigma code, nor did they know that he was the primary developer of modern computers. Most people believed that computers were developed in the United States.

In 1945, Turing was awarded the very prestigious Order of the British Empire by King George VI for his wartime services, but it was kept secret until after he died. The full story of his code breaking was kept completely secret until 1974, and only then was Turing recognized as the man who won the U-boat war for the Allies during World War II.
Alan Turing - Celebrating the life of a genius - YouTube

In 2009, following an internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a public apology on behalf of the British government for “the appalling way he was treated.” In 2012, sixty years after the British government convicted Turing of a criminal act, the House of Lords granted a statutory pardon to Turing for offenses under section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. In 2014, Queen Elizabeth II officially pardoned Turing for his “crime” of gross indecency.

A statue of Turing stands at Manchester College where he taught, with the plaque: “Father of computer science, mathematician, logician, wartime codebreaker, victim of prejudice”. Before the 2012 Olympics in London, the Olympic Torch was paraded in front of Turing’s statue on his 100th birthday.....by Gabe Mirkin, MD

[E.Martin]

Good post regarding Bletchly Park and what was achieved there by Turing and his team.
What they did would not have been possible with out the help of the Royal Navy namely
HMS Petard this ship helped to blow a UBoat to the surface then 2 of her crew,Chief Officer
and a AB swam over to the sinking UBoat boarded her then went down into the UBoat
to retrieve and pass up the enigma machine and other important documents both lives were lost
as the boat sank.
HMS Petard was involved in the sinking of 3 Axis submarines,German,Italian,Japanese.

[John Gill]

#1- interesting post Marian, particularly about his homosexuality and the subsequent 'devil and the deep blue sea' choice he was given re the oestrogen treatment. However this treatment merely reduces the physical aspects of sexual desire, sort of The flesh is weak but the spirit is still alive. I'm sure this must have had a bearing on his mental state which may have been the reason for (allegedly) taking his own life. In the US, in the state of Texas a convicted rapist and murderer after serving a long sentence applied for parole on the condition that he undertook a course of drugs including oestrogen. This was agreed and less than a year after his release he attacked and raped a woman using a broom handle- again, the spirit and desire remained. What poor Alan Turing endured can only be imagined.

[gray_marian]

As an aside John, re the Texan what is the theorem used now on similar species in America, do you know?.....hopefully "put down" No idea what happens in UK etc either.

[Ron B Manderson]

Shame on the bosses.
If he was homo, that's his business.
I know it was the law, but never harmed anyone.
We tend to forget the old saying " there by the grace of God go I"
Ron the batcave

[Red Lead Ted]

Marian, Our own Merchant Navy was not immune to prejudice, Not so much by fellow seaman who lived and sailed with homo sexual seaman here is a plea from Bill Hogarth, Secretary to the National Union Of Seamen's Union that is not exactly decadent.


The leader of the seamen's union tried in vain to keep homosexuality illegal on British Merchant Navy ships as the Sexual Offences Bill made its progress into law in 1966, according to Public Record Office files released yesterday. William Hogarth, secretary of the National Union of Seamen, sought Harold Wilson's help to prevent the Bill applying to his members. He said: "Unless special consideration is given to the position of the Merchant Navy, it could become an attractive venue for homosexuals." This unknown factor in the fraught discussions leading to the passing of Leo Abse's Bill the following year emerged in a release of Home Office papers on homosexual reform, some of the originally closed for more than a century. Terry. p.s. All my exes live in Texas

[John Arton]

The BBC has had a decent set of programs on the Bletchley Park code breakers set as a mini series. Bletchley House has been refurbished and is now open as a museum to Alan Turing and his code breakers.
A most gifted man who dedicated his lives work to protecting Britain in those dark days, yet was tossed aside like a bit of waste by the powers to be, who possibly would have all been in P.O.W. camps if Turing and his code breakers had not such great work in halting the unsustainable losses in the Battle of the Atlantic, the result of which could have meant a little moustachioed German possibly marching down Whitehall at the head of his armies. Churchill reckoned that without the assistance of Turing in turning the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic we were within a month of having to sue for peace. All that talent and brains lost just because the establishment, 50% of whom were, or had at one time, indulging in homosexuality.
A great loss to us all.
rgds
JA

[happy daze john in oz]

It is interesting the way homosexuals ahve been treated over the years. Here in Victoria it was only made legal in the early 80's. Now bill has been passed to quash all previous convictions made before then. Now they are going a bit further in implimenting a same sex marraige bill, but doubt thia will go ahead as feral gov will not allow.