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

All right!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Slashdot's finally gotten to the point where its stories are driven by the Google Doodle!

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:suicide with cyanide?

[ggpauly]

I was not aware that at the moment I was poisoned. I was certainly aware later when the symptoms appeared, although I did not immediately connect them to cyanide poisoning. I had a searing headache, muscle contractions, and lethargy, not the full range of symptoms which include convulsions, cardiac arrest, and asphyxiation perceived even when breathing. Coma will occur - this is I suppose the end result of almost any fatal poisoning. It is not clear to me when unconsciousness occurs in this process. it may be dose-dependant. It would be instructive to hear from those who have been rescued from the full throes of symptoms. The only person I personally know who rescued himself from a high dose of cyanide by immediate ingestion of antidote suffered only minor symptoms.

Curiously, that person (who orally ingested a splash of concentrated cyanide in a plating plant) took an oral antidote that does not seem to be mentioned in the Wikipedia entry on cyanide poisoning. It may have been thiosulphate, I don't remember clearly off the top of my head. Keep your mouth closed in a plating plant. I was once obliged to prepare a sulphate solution for myself in a laboratory after accidently ingesting concentrated barium. Worst case of beer farts I ever had, no other symptoms. If you work with poisonous substances you should be prepared.

Re:More than a suicide

[ggpauly]

So you're suggesting that one of the greatest polymaths since Eratosthenes had the the mentality of a 5 year old girl, in part because he was gay?

More likely an accident

[daveschroeder]

Please note that most seem to be construing this news as a cue to believe that Turing may have been murdered (by the British government, naturally), when in reality, Prof Jack Copeland, the foremost Turing scholar, and Turing's own mother thought it to be a careless accident rather than a suicide, with Copeland saying "the evidence should be taken at face value - that an accidental death is certainly consistent with all the currently known circumstances." The truth is that the initial inquest was so sloppy we will never know for certain, so those who are apt to believe in government conspiracies will no doubt believe he was assassinated (after he was already subject to humiliating chemical castration), even as the premier Turing expert believes it was more likely an accident.

Re:Prepare for it to get even muddier...

[Eric S. Smith]

"...he died a couple of years after the (grossly wrong) conviction..."

Because if he didn't kill himself that very day, it isn't a plausible cause?

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.