Update to
Alan Turing: the Enigma

by Andrew Hodges

Part 1: Esprit de Corps


Alan Turing: the Enigma

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Page 1: A genealogy on this site by Daniel Morgan, shows the Turing family members later in the twentieth century. The baronetcy has passed to Alan Turing's nephew, John Dermot Turing (b. 1960), the son of John Turing by his second wife.

Page 3: The spellings of the Indian place-names are as I found them in the India Office records of the time and do not accord with correct transliterations by modern standards.

Page 5: There is now an English Heritage plaque on AMT's birthplace. I had the honour of unveiling it on 23 June 1998. See this page for this event and also this Scrapbook page for more on AMT's birthplace. It was later converted into a hotel. Sigmund Freud stayed there in 1938.

Page 16: AMT seems to have somewhat underestimated the original contribution of his relative George Johnstone Stoney. Nowadays he is credited with formulating in 1874 the important idea that natural units of length, time and mass can be formed out of Newton's gravitational constant, the speed of light, and the charge of the electron. See for instance The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler (1986), page 291.

Page 25: The house in Guildford was in Ennismore Avenue. In the 1920s it was no. 8, but has since been renumbered as no. 22. There is a plaque on the house marking it as Alan Turing's family home.

Page 30: I have now made out the 'illegible' word in Mr Ross's report on AMT's handwriting. It was unswerving inexactitude of which the schoolmaster complained. The report is illustrated on this Scrapbook page.

Page 43: Norman Heatley (1911-2004) was a remarkable parallel scientific figure to AT. He was a leading member of the team who developed penicillin at Oxford in 1940, but remained largely unrecognised. Another story involving pure 1930s scientific dedication, extraordinary initiatives in 1940, wartime American industry and gigantic post-war significance. See the Wikipedia entry.

Page 44: The letter from Christopher Morcom should end with 'Neat's foot oil', instead of 'Neal's boot oil'.




There is further material in the Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook: Empire of the Mind: Alan Turing's Early Life and The Inspiration of Life and Death




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