Alan Turing: Inquest's suicide verdict 'not supportable'

[UnrepentantLiberal]

Alan Turing, the British mathematical genius and codebreaker born 100 years ago on 23 June, may not have committed suicide, as is widely believed.



By Roland Pease
BBC Radio Science Unit
23 June 2012

At a conference in Oxford on Saturday, Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland will question the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest.

He believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict. Indeed, he argues, Turing's death may equally probably have been an accident.

What is well known and accepted is that Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning. His housekeeper famously found the 41-year-old mathematician dead in his bed, with a half-eaten apple on his bedside table.

It is widely said that Turing had been haunted by the story of the poisoned apple in the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and had resorted to the same desperate measure to end the persecution he was suffering as a result of his homosexuality.

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092

From Wikipedia:

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.

During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. For a time he was head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

After the war he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE. In 1948 Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, where he assisted in the development of the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and he predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, which were first observed in the 1960s.

Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, just over two weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined it was suicide; his mother and some others believed his death was accidental. On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turingwas treated after the war.

More: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

[rbixby]

1. How does one accidentally eat a poisoned apple?

NT

[kestrel91316]

2. The apple was not technically poisoned. The seeds of all apples contain

cyanide, which is why you aren't supposed to eat them.

I think you have to chew them well, and I doubt that seeds from half an apple have enough cyanide to kill. If that were the case, it would be illegal to sell them as food in the US today.

[struggle4progress]

4. I always eat my apple cores, seeds and all: it would take quite a lot of apple seeds to harm you

[eppur_se_muova]

3. He didn't. He ate an apple. He died of cyanide poisoning.

According to the article, no connection between the two was ever established. He was doing chemical experiments with cyanide, and may have inhaled HCN.