Comments on: Remembering Alan Turing

By: Ron Burns

Ron Burns — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:30:30 +0000

Well put Sandra, says it all.

By: Sandra

Sandra — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:05:33 +0000

@Sarah/Saffy He didn’t actually die from the chemical castration, although I think it would be fair to say it made him very depressed. He was found dead from cyanide (I think) posioning which he had injected into an apple and eaten. Hi favourite story was Snow White. And you thought he couldn’t get any more endearing???!!!

Such a tragic loss and a wonderful axample of how homophobia within institutions – which still exists – can cut short the lives of people who have a huge contribution to make.

I really hope we can raise his profile in 2012 and make people aware of how damaging homophobia was to Alan Turing’s life and still is to so many now.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:28:30 +0000

(and thnx for a quick snippet into someone I had never even thought much about), ignorant on many matters.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:23:04 +0000

100% agree with the sentiment of this.

By: alan

alan — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:54:21 +0000

“British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.”
Any chance of getting Maggie to made an official public apology on behalf of the British government? For the way in which she treated Post Office Telephones. One of who’s engineers was responsible for inventing and creating the bombe. If she’d sorted them out instead of writing them off, they could have been running the world’s communications by now. Rather than in danger of emulating Turing.

By: roz

roz — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:46:34 +0000

ah yes, he whose numbers enable postings on this blog!

By: Sarah/Saffy

Sarah/Saffy — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:30:35 +0000

This is awful I didn’t realise that that was how he had died My husband says that Turing really hated the tablets and not just because they supressed his sex drive. Apparently they did it becuase they were worried he was a security risk. I didn’t even realise that being gay was against the law then.

It makes me really sad and angry.

Bad enough to do that to anyone let alone someone who had worked so hard for the country that then did that to him.

Sarah

By: Jamie

Jamie — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:24:22 +0000

Alan Turing was a genius, pure and simple. I remember reading some of his papers when I was still studying Computer Science at University. And was simply staggered by the amount of knowledge that this man had, and was willing to share.

Without him, who knows if the Allied Forces could have broken the Enigma code AT ALL during the second world war?
Without him we wouldn’t have had the Turing test (a test for Artificial Intelligence).
Without him, we wouldn’t have an understanding of mathematical biology.
Without him, we wouldn’t have the abstract idea that all computers, mobile phones and anything resembling IT is based on (The Turing Machine)

In short, we owe so much to Alan Turing. It’s absolutely ridiculous that he was treated the way that he was.

By: neil j

neil j — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:12:48 +0000

Here here, a true great British hero. Astonishing that this could have happened in my fathers lifetime. How the world has changed, and partly due to him.

By: Sapphire

Sapphire — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:35:37 +0000

One aspect of Turing’s work which is not often remembered is his discovery of the equations behind pattern generation in nature. It was cut short by his untimely death but it promised to have real importance for understanding the mechanisms of evolution. Together with insights from chaos theory Turing’s equations show that evolution is not the totally random process that the Creationists would have us believe, It is governed by “laws”. It’s just possible that Turing, had he lived, would have found out what they are.