| Alan Turing's Papers Raise A Fortune |
| Written by Sue Gee | |||
| Monday, 23 June 2025 | |||
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Because so much of his work was top secret, Alan Turing was very much an unsung hero during his lifetime. Recognition of his many achievements dawned gradually and now his reputation is worldwide, as evidenced by the record prices realized last week when a collection of Turing papers were sold at auction with online bidders from the US and China willing to pay well above the estimated values.
Alan Mathison Turing (June 23, 1912 - June 7,1954) Alan Turing, who was Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912, was a polymath. Having excelled at mathematics and science at Sherborne College where he was educated from age 13 to 19 (May 1926 to July 1931), he then went on to study mathematics at King's College, Cambridge. He graduated with first-class honors in 1934 and was elected a Fellow of the College in 1935 for his dissertation on probability theory. It was at Cambridge, in 1936, that he wrote his seminal paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Although it wasn't well received at the time, it introduced the important concept of a 'universal machine: 'a computer system that, given enough time and memory, can achieve the same results as any other computer system.' This concept, now referred to a a "Turing machine", laid the theoretical foundation for modern computers. It was an offprint of this paper, together with a loose-leaf print of his portrait photograph signed by Turing himself that fetched the highest bid in the auction held last week of a papers that had been given by Turing's mother to Norman Routledge, who was a personal friend of Turing having been his PhD student at King's after World War II. Having been given an estimate of £40,000 to £60,000 it achieved a hammer price of £160,000. Turing's personal copy of his PhD thesis, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals" bearing his signature on its cover page had the same estimate and was sold for £85,000 and a creased single page pre-print of his very first published paper, with an estimate of £1,000 - 3,000, sold for £6,000.
During World War II Turing was recruited to help the war effort as a cryptanalyst working at Bletchley Park to break the German Enigma Codes and the work he did there was shrouded in secrecy until the 1970s, more than a decade after Turing's death. Turing was found dead on June 8, 1954, with a half-eaten apple beside his bed and, despite the fact that the the apple was never tested for cyanide, the coroner's official verdict was suicide by cyanide poisoning. In the letter sent by Turing's mother, Sara, to Routledge about the papers she was sending him, she maintains the poisoning was accidental: "I am convinced it was accidental as the experiment of coke under electrolysis – which smelt of cyanide had been going on for weeks – I feel sure he got some of this on his fingers & so on to the apple he customarily ate in bed. Everything was found at his house quite normal and acceptances of invitations were there ready for post, new socks he just bought. His haphazard ways often made me very anxious." This letter had a valuation of £1,000 - 2,000 and actually fetched £9,000, six times its mid-estimate. Suicide seemed plausible given that in 1952 Turing had been convicted of gross indecency. Not only had he been subjected to chemical castration, he also lost his security clearance, which meant he could no longer work on any sensitive government projects, including his ongoing cryptographic consultancy for GCHQ and also barred him from entering the United States, another significant blow for a leading mathematician and computer scientist in an era of burgeoning international collaboration in these fields. Although he managed to retain his academic position at the University of Manchester and continued to work there on theoretical computer science, the career he had previously enjoyed was severely curtailed and he must have been aware of the stigma of his crime as well as facing ongoing police surveillance and harassment.
Two personal letters from Turing to Routledge, scanned copies and transcripts of which were included in Lot 2 of the auction sale give some insight into Turing's attitude towards his homosexuality and to his situation as a convicted man. One of the letters contains the cryptic lines:
"Turing believes that machines think / Turing lies with men / Therefore machines do not think" and closes "Yours in distress, Alan." In the later letter, Turing hints at a delightful story ... of my adventurous life and continues; Being on probation my shining virtue was terrific and had to be. If I had so much as parked my bicycle on the wrong side of the road there might have been 12 years for me. Of course the police are going to be a bit more nosy, so virtue must continue to shine/ I've also been having psychoanalysis for a few months now, and it seems to be working quite a bit, It's quite fun and I think I've got a good man. 80% of the time we are working out the significance of my dream. No time to write about logic now! Ever, Alan This lot, which also included a telegram from Turing congratulating Routledge on his fellowship at Kings, had a valuation of £1,000 - 2,000 and fetched £5,500, over three times its mid-estimate. If you want to know more about Turing's life and work, as a Bletchley Park Codebreaker and as a Computer Scientist, see Celebrating Alan Turing and follow other links in Related Articles. Related ArticlesTuring Year: The Legacy Explored Alan Turing Commemorated In Steel Statutory Pardon For Alan Turing Widespread Celebrations But No Pardon For Turing Turing Exhibition and Facebook Timeline Commemorative Stamp for Alan Turing To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. 
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 25 June 2025 ) |
