Turing Archive Director Questions Alan Turing Suicide Report

That Alan Turing committed suicide is widely accepted as fact. Now, an anonymous reader writes, "According to Professor Jack Copeland, director of the The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, 'The coroner [in Turing's case] didn't really investigate the evidence at all, he just jumped to the conclusion that he committed suicide. He seems to have been very biased from the statements in newspapers at the time.' Copeland further said that medical evidence suggested Turing died from inhaling cyanide rather than drinking or ingesting it."

Comments

suicide with cyanide?

[ggpauly]

As a chemist who has worked with cyanide, I question whether he would have chosen this method to end his own life. Cyanide poisoning is extremely unpleasant and chemists who work with it generally are aware of this. Cyanide gas is very easy to produce from cyanide solutions, just a matter of adjusting or failing to adjust the pH. I have given myself low level cyanide poisoning without being aware of it until the symptoms appeared hours later, and many others have been saved by having the antidote at hand when they realized they had been exposed.

The gas could easily have been produced in his laboratory by his own accident or neglect, or by someone else.

In my opinion Turing's death by cyanide poisoning was not an intentional suicide.

Re:Widely reported as fact ...

[hey!]

the funny thing is that the assessment is that he would have been harassed relatively less in the US (he could have gotten a position there after his visit in Princeton).
Apparently being gay was not considered as suspicious as being a communist back then

Well, the only thing you can conclude from the whole sad story is that bigots are idiots. They took away Turing's security clearance because they were afraid his sexual orientation made him vulnerable to blackmail, even though by this point he was a *known* homosexual. The biggest potential threat to national security would have been Turing going to work for a foreign power because he could no longer work in Britain.

America was no better.In 1949 rocket scientists Qian Xuesen applied to become a naturalized US citizen, when reviewing his application noticed, "hey, this guy is Chinese!" He was imprisoned for a year and deported to China because being Chinese he was considered a security risk. He also happened to be the most brilliant young rocket scientist of his generation; so his deportation resulted in the worst possible outcome. He didn't give US rocketry secrets to China, he gave China its own rocketry *program*. Quian became the father of the Chinese ballistic missile program and later space program. He was deeply involved with education, instrumental to training the engineers and scientists who are running China's space program today.