Alan Turing: Heroic Life, Tragic Death

In the 1950s, the United Kingdom made being homosexual illegal. Turing knew this, but he was perhaps too naive about how openly he could express his sexuality. At age 39, he began a relationship with a 19-year-old drifter named Arnold Murray.Arnold Murray.Murray then broke into Turing’s house, and Turing reported the theft to the police. His gay relationship emerged during the investigation.His gay relationship emerged during the investigation.Murray and Turing were arrested for “gross indecency.”

This law was the same one that tried Oscar Wilde in the 1800s. Conservative post-war Britain arrested many people under this harsh law. The court convicted Turing and offered him a choice: prison or hormone treatment. Turing picked the treatment.

Turing helped win WWII, but his conviction mattered little. Being gay was viewed as too big a crime. He avoided jail but faced probation and had to start taking estrogen pills.He had to start taking estrogen pills.This was chemical castration. The severity of Turing's punishment shows how 1950s Britain viewed homosexuality. In 1952, the same year Turing was arrested, a 'progressive' tabloid ran an article calling gay men, among others, 'freaks,' treating gay people as a problem needing fixing.

The hormone treatment had downsides. Its aim was to make gay people straight, but it actually made Turing grow breasts and become impotent. It could also cause depression. However, while The Imitation Game shows Turing broken by his punishment, he kept working on projects.The Imitation Game shows Turing broken by his punishment; in reality, he kept working on various projects.The Imitation Game shows Turing broken by his punishment; in reality, he kept working on various projects.

Turing appeared brave, but inside he suffered. Unable to be himself, his thoughts turned to suicide. A cleaner found him on June 8, 1954, after he had eaten half an apple laced with cyanide. The coroner ruled he killed himself. There is an urban legend that this inspired the Apple logo with a bite taken out, but this is untrue.There is an urban legend.This urban legend inspired the Apple logo with a bite taken out, but this is untrue.

Friends of Turing and his mother thought he might have killed himself by accident.Friends of Turing and his mother thought he might have killed himself by accident.They claimed he did not seem depressed in the days and weeks before his death. He also experimented with cyanide in a personal lab before dying. They thought he had accidentally gotten some on the apple and died.They thought he had accidentally gotten some on it and died.They thought he had accidentally gotten some on it and died.

Some people suggest the British government worried he would leak secrets due to his known sexual orientation and poisoned him on purpose. We may never know the truth since he left no suicide note.

After the war ended, Turing kept working. WWII finished, but the Cold War began right away; code breaking remained a key skill. The government paid him 5,000 pounds yearly.Turing worked for the Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ.He worked for the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

His success ended fast. The US and UK teamed up on government intelligence, and America held harsher views on homosexuality than England. The US worried any homosexual man could be tricked into giving up secrets. When Turing was arrested, heHe lost his security clearance., so he lost his job. He told a friendThis angered him greatly..

Turing knew he was gay early on. He developed feelings for a friend while in school.The boy’s name was Christopher., and though they were good friends, Turing did not feel the same way. Turing later wrote that though his friend knew his feelings, he “hated him showing it.” Both were geeks, bonding over math and chemistry. Sadly, Christopher died young, and Turing was crushed.

While Turing worked on code-breaking at Bletchley Park during WWII, he spoke openly about his sexuality. Still, he once proposed toHis good friend was Joan Clarke.. They shared fun moments, like movie dates, but Joan was still shocked by the marriage proposal. She said yes, but the next day they walked, and he admitted he had “homosexual tendencies.” She worried because she thought this was “permanent,” but she did not end the engagement. Turing ended it later.

If Turing was a war hero, why did people treat him badly later? Part of this came from his inability to tell anyone what he achieved during the war. Everyone who worked at Bletchley Parkswore secrecy. They could not even talk about their work with their families. Some died keeping the secret. The extent of their achievements only emergedwell into the 21st century.This meant that when Turing was arrested for being gay, he could not tell the police he was the “savior of England,” the man Winston Churchill said made

When Turing faced arrest for being gay, he could not tell the police he was the “savior of England,” the man Winston Churchill called.to ending the war. Instead, they just treated him like a pervert, and that was it. Perhaps his punishment would have been lighter if he could have told people what he achieved.Despite the brilliant things he did during his life, at least one of Turing's report cards stated that he was not going to achieve much

One of Turing's report cards showed that despite his brilliant achievements, he did poorly in school...

Teachers saw Alan Turing had a real talent for math. They found issues with how he showed that talent. They agreed he had a 'distinct talent' for the subject, but they said he lacked how to make a solution intelligible and legible.The work was intelligible and legible.The solution let people understand it. One of the generation's sharpest minds faced a mark because he lacked neat handwriting. His brain ran toward the next task; he did not care if the last one looked pretty. Still, he gained admission to Cambridge and started a career that changed the world.

Turing knew he was an outcast. This gave him sympathy for people facing hardship. In 1939, before England declared war on Germany, Turing and his friend Fred Clayton heard about boys in a refugee camp in Britain. They cycled there one day, andBoth agreed to sponsor a boy..

Turing named his sponsee Robert Augenfeld; he came from a high-ranking Viennese family. Turing got him into an exclusive private school and took him on trips. Turing worried about 'Bob's' education and career. He wrote to his mother about it during the war, focusing on saving the world. Turing never dropped his duty to the young refugee.

People took time regarding Turing’s treatment during his life, but some justice came after he died.

In 2009, an online petition starteddemanding an apologyPrime Minister Gordon Brown offered one for how the British government treated Turing, but it was not enough. Then, in 2014, almost 60 years after Turing allegedly killed himself, the Queen granted a royal pardon for his 'crime'.

Turing’s tragic end brought some good. In 2017, the 'Turing Law' took effectThis law automatically pardoned men convicted of homosexual acts who died before the laws changed. Living men can now seek and get a pardon for the same.

Turing was a graduate student when he first changed history. He studied at Princeton and wrote a paper called "On Computable Numbers," with an Application to theEntscheidungsproblem.This might not sound like the most interesting thing ever, but itHe basically invented computer science.As we know it.

The paper imagined a machine that could solve as many problems as the human brain. The best part? It could follow instructions on paper tape to do different things. He invented software. This theoretical machine could do anything; before, a computer solved only one type of problem. Turing’s 'universal machine' became the computer we use now.

Before WWII, code breaking relied only on humans. The human brain functioned as the world's best computer. People thought cracking difficult codes meant other humans could solve them. Then, the Germans built the Enigma machine. Polish people cracked its first code before the war began. Germans then made it much harder. Twelve thousand people worked three shifts nonstop at the British secret code facility atBletchley ParkNo one could break it. Turing and computers stepped in.

Turing created a code-breaking machine calledthe BombeThe Bombe figured out what the German navy was saying by the war's end. This mattered. General Dwight Eisenhower even said Turing and his team at Bletchley likely cut the war short by two years. Turing and his computer saved millions of lives. Sadly, it did not save him.

In 1950, Turing posed an important question:Can machines think? This created a huge problem. He wanted to see if computers could become smart enough to trick people into thinking they were human.

The test worked like this: someone asked questions to two people. One was a computer; the other was a human. The questioner did not know which was which. After five minutes, they tried to find the human. Then, another person asked and guessed. If the questioners guessed the computer was the human more than 30% of the time, the machine passed the Turing Test.

For a long time, this seemed impossible. Then, in 2014, a computer named “Eugene,” built to mimic a 13-year-old boy, fooled 33% of participants. The Turing Test passed. Turing helped show machines can be as smart as humans.