Gay Personalities
ALAN TURING
One of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century, Alan Turing, who is also called the father of the modern computer, was a tragic homosexual. As though the horrors of the Second World War were not enough, Turing shocked the world by committing suicide in 1954. He had been prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952, at a time when such deeds were criminal on the British Isles. He agreed to hormone therapy and was administered oestrogen injections which a treatment that was tantamount to chemical castration. He had accepted the treatment as an alternative to prison.
Alan Turing was not a well known figure during his lifetime. But today he is famous for being an eccentric yet passionate British mathematician, who conceived modern computing and played a crucial part in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in WW2.
At 13 years old, he was sent to Sherborne School, a large boarding school in Dorset. The rigid education system gave his free-ranging scientific mind little encouragement, so Turing studied advanced modern scientific ideas, such as relativity, on his own, running far ahead of the school syllabus.
Turing won a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, and took the Mathematics degree with distinction. Turing was already on track for a distinguished career in pure mathematics. Yet his unusual interest in finding practical uses for abstract mathematical ideas was to push him in an altogether different direction.
In 1936, Turing published a paper that is now recognised as the foundation of computer science.
Turing analysed what it meant for a human to follow a definite method or procedure to perform a task. For this purpose, he invented the idea of a ‘Universal Machine’ that could decode and perform any set of instructions. Ten years later he would turn this revolutionary idea into a practical plan for an electronic computer, capable of running any program.
In July 1939, the Polish Cipher Bureau passed on crucial information about the Enigma machine, which was used by the Germans to encipher all its military and naval signals. After September 1939, joined by other mathematicians at Bletchley Park, Turing rapidly developed a new machine (the ‘Bombe’) capable of breaking Enigma messages on an industrial scale.
In 1941, Turing’s section, ‘Hut 8’, mastered the German submarine communication system that was vital to the battle of the Atlantic.
In the course of this exciting work he found the friendship of another mathematician, Joan Clarke. Turing proposed to her, but immediately told her of his ‘homosexual tendencies’, and the engagement soon ended. After this, he became more confident in developing his homosexual life. Meanwhile, the war took a new turn as America joined the war.
In March 1946 Turing produced a detailed design for what was called the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE.)
This was a digital computer in the modern sense, storing programs in its memory. His report emphasised the unlimited range of applications opened up by this technological revolution, and software developments ahead of parallel American developments. Yet his relationship with NPL soured and he left in 1948, before a pilot version of the ACE was made in 1950.
Turing moved to the University of Manchester, where electronic engineers had already demonstrated a very small stored-program computer.
Now he focused on the use of computers. His main theme had been in investigating the power of a computer to rival human thought. In 1950, he published a philosophical paper including the idea of an ‘imitation game’ for comparing human and machine outputs, now called the Turing Test. This paper remains his best known work and was a key contribution to the field of Artificial Intelligence.
All male homosexual activity was illegal until 1967, and Turing was prosecuted when an affair with a young man came to the notice of the police.
He made a statement lacking any element of contrition, and was treated severely. Rather than go to prison he accepted probation on the condition of having hormonal treatment which was, in effect, a chemical castration. His security clearance was revoked, ending ongoing work with the government code-breaking department – now called GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). His reaction was one of defiance and bravado: in particular escaping British law by going abroad to Norway and Greece.
Turing’s problems were not over. Defined as a security risk, he was harassed by police surveillance.
Alan Turing was found dead in bed by his cleaner on 8 June 1954. He had died from cyanide poisoning the day before. A partly eaten apple lay next to his body. The coroner’s verdict was suicide. His mother argued he had accidentally ingested cyanide during an amateur chemistry experiment, but he had probably planned his death to allow her to think this.
In December 2013, Alan Turing was granted a posthumous royal pardon, formally cancelling his criminal conviction.
It followed a four-year campaign supported by tens of thousands of people, including scientists Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins. Opinion was divided on whether singling out an individual in this way did true justice to a situation in which thousands of gay men had been criminalised.
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