Congratulations to John Graham-Cumming for organizing the petition for a formal apology to Alan Turing for his treatment by the British government after the Second World War, which led to his subsequent suicide in 1954.
This past Thursday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued that long-overdue apology, in response to the overwhelming numbers (30,000) who added their names to Graham-Cumming’s petition.
While at the Sybase Techwave Symposium in late August I had the opportunity to visit the International Spy Museum which, amongst many other exhibits, has a considerable exhibit dedicated to code-breaking during the Second World War, and in particular the work of Alan Turing and his efforts, along with the rest of staff of Bletchley Park, to break the various Enigma machine codes used by the German armed forces. Seeing this exhibit – which includes an Enigma machine – staggers the mind, considering the complexities of the problem and the crudeness of the equipment available during the War to solve it. While there are many books on the subject, I have particularly enjoyed Singh’s volume [1] which gives an excellent overview of Turing’s work on cracking Enigma codes.
Well done, John Graham-Cumming.
[1] Simon Singh (1999) The Code Book. First Anchor Books (a division of Random House), New York, New York. ISBN 0-385-49532-3.
Glenn Paulley is a Director of Engineering at Sybase iAnywhere.
1 response so far ↓
1 Spyro Svolos // Sep 15, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I think that it is wonderful that you published this notice and that Turing has his well deserved apology. I’d like to point out that according to some authors there is doubt that Turing committed suicide. M. Mitchell Waldrop writes in ‘The Dream Machine’ on page 124: ‘Whether it was suicide, however, we will never know. His mother would …accidental, the tragic out-come of and unnoticed spill[cyanide] during a chemical experiment, combined with Turing’s pensive habit of putting his fingers in his mouth. And she had a point. From all accounts, Turing had been in good spirits…he was enthusiastic about this research…he gave no indication he was contemplating suicide.’ A tragedy either way. Let’s give him the benefit of a doubt and consider that it may have been an accident. The book is highly recommended.