British Government Apologizes to Gay Codebreaker Alan Turing

After thousands signed a petition calling for a formal British apology to mathematician Alan Turing. During World War II, Turing, who is known as the father of modern computing, devised the Turing Bombe, a codebreaking device that was used to decipher the Nazi enigma codes, up to 3,000 messages per day. He was also gay, and two years after being convicted of "gross indecency" and sentenced to undergo hormone therapy, he killed himself with a cyanide-laced apple.

 Today, Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized:

"Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly. Over the years, millions more lived in fear in conviction. I am proud that those days are gone and that in the past 12 years this Government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan's status as one of Britain's most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality, and long overdue...

...It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we're sorry. You deserved so much better."

Read Brown's full piece in the Telegraph.

Gordon Brown: I'm proud to say sorry to a real war hero [telegraph]

Pictured: a statue of Turing at Britain's Bletchley Park.

An excerpt of a documentary on Turing, AFTER THE JUMP...

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New Play About Gay Enigma Codebreaker Alan Turing Debuts

A new play about Alan Turing recently debuted at New York's Ensemble Studio Theatre Company's First Light Festival. Pure, by A. Rey Pamatmat, explores the relationship between Turing's work and personal life. During World War II, Turing, who is known as the father of modern computing, devised the Turing Bombe, a codebreaking device that was used to decipher the Nazi enigma codes, up to 3,000 messages per day.

He was also gay, and two years after being convicted of "gross indecency" and sentenced to undergo hormone therapy, he killed himself with a cyanide-laced apple.

Scientific American reviews the play:

"Pure is less about Turing the mathematician, however, than it is about Turing the man. Pamatmat first became enamored with Turing after reading David Bodanis's book Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity, which suggests that Turing's passion for science was fueled by his homosexual love for a childhood friend, Chris, who died from tuberculosis when Turing was a teenager. Pure suggests that Turing may have turned his attention to artificial intelligence—a field that explores, at its core, the meaning of life—to celebrate Chris's life and let it live on in his work. In almost every scene, Turing has a brief conversation with the dead Chris; it later becomes clear that the entire play is set in the hazy moments before Turing's death, when he is hallucinating or perhaps communicating with Chris's spirit in the afterlife. Pamatmat, who wrote Pure for the Ensemble Studio Theatre's annual First Light Festival, paints Turing as a wonderfully brazen character. The mathematician was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was a criminal act in England; in one scene, Turing admits to his fiancé—three days after proposing to her—that he has 'homosexual tendencies.' (Pamatmat says this conversation really happened.) Pure suggests that Turing's insolence dances the fine line between bravery and foolishness; though he was eventually caught and forced to take estrogen supplements to curb his libido, he never doubted himself or his sexual choices. 'A lot of his greatest work came from his being different,' Pamatmat says. 'That's why he was really able to blaze the trail.'"

Alan Turing Comes Alive [scientific american]

Previously
Alan Turing's Sexuality 'Forgotten' at Statue Unveiling [tr]
Alan Turing: The Tributes Keep Coming [tr]
Alan Turing Honored in Snow Bust [tr]
Alan Turing Jack O'Lantern Cracks the Halloween Code [tr]

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Alan Turing's Sexuality 'Forgotten' at Statue Unveiling

Today, a statue of Alan Turing will be unveiled at Bletchley Park, honoring the man who has come to be known as Britain's greatest inventor.

During World War II, Turing, who is also known as the father of modern computing, devised the Turing Bombe, a codebreaking device that was used to decipher the Nazi enigma codes, up to 3,000 messages per day.

American billionaire and philanthropist Sidney Frank funded the new statue, according to The Inquirer:

"The life-size one and a half ton statue is made from half a million pieces of five hundred million year old Welsh slate. Stone which would have been in Nazi control, if Turing had not had the mathematical genius to crack the German Naval Enigma messages during world war two. Later, his Bombe machine was to provide a body of work that provided the foundations on which the modern computer age was created. Of the people who have heard of him, few know the proper context of his death. 'The only Alan Turing I know of is the mathematician, logician, and cryptographer who died in 1954 from eating an apple,' said one surveyee. The origin of the Apple symbol is meant to be a tribute to Turing."

The reason thought to be why Turing killed himself with the apple, which was laced with cyanide, is because Turing had been convicted just two years earlier of 'gross indecency' after it was discovered that he had been in a homosexual relationship. Due to that conviction, he had been ordered to undergo hormone therapy.

Turing, a brilliant inventor and mathematician, was pushed to the fringes despite his talents just because he was gay. Sound like a few Arabic linguists we know?

So, the press release announcing this new statue makes no mention of the fact that Turing was gay. Gay.com UK were sent the press release and contacted Bletchley Park. They wrote back:

"Many thanks for your email. I completely understand your comments. However, in the context of the statue and Bletchley Park, the press release relates entirely to his invaluable work during the war years and is not in any way an attempt to whitewash his sexuality. This isn’t to say that his sexuality isn’t important in the overall story of the man and that he wasn’t treated abominably in later years. However, with very limited funds and resources, the Park is not able to tell the full life stories of the many heroes and heroines who made such a difference to the outcome of the war."

They later issued a fuller apology. Said director Simon Greenish: "The press release did not include a statement about him being gay, which perhaps it could have done, this was not a deliberate ommision (sic) but, I certainly accept, could have been an opportunity which was missed."

Said Gay.com's Stewart Who: "It's a bit like talking about Martin Luther King, but not mentioning that he's black."

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Posted 8:50 AM EST by on in Alan Turing , Great Britain , News | Permalink | Comments (34)