Happy Birthday Alan Turing
 

Should have been raising his bat today for a pretty spectacular century.

Great man.

Properly inspirational man. A message from history about discrimination that many of us seem to have forgotten....

Who?

Was going to do that myself, obviously in jest to see if anyone took a bite (geddit?)


Obviously as a Manc, who studied Computer Science, before moving to Politics (with lots of War history in the mix), the guy is simply one of the most astounding people of the 20th Century, and really more should be made of this fine occasion

Wag. One of the best of the past century. Did not deserve the despicable treatment he received (though neither did anyone else).

An undeniably great man. It's tragic to think he died in ignimony and it wasn't until twenty years after his death that the full extent of his heroism became apparent due to the declassification of the documents pertaining to his work at Bletchley.

One must note he made some terrible choices tho; not least the decision to allow himself to be chemically castrated to avoid a custodial sentence. A gay man not wanting to be sent to prison is rather like a kid not wanting to go to a sweet shop, surely?

Legend. Should be talked about more.

Respect to the man. Quickly googled his private life and...

"Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment."
What the ****, in England, in the 20th century?!?! Unpleasantly surprised by the british law here.

Beeb carrying an an article suggesting new evidence that he didn't commit suicide, but was just a bit careless with his personal cyanide stock...

Yes I was surprised how late homosexual acts were decriminalised - 1967 apparently for England and Wales. 1980 and 1982 in Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively. Obviously it is still illegal in a lot of countries.

I had read the BBC item about how it may not have been suicide. It was interesting and it certainly doesn't sound as though there should be a conclusion one way or another based on the evidence.

Discrimination and prejudice is a part of human evolution, in this day and age Turing would instead be discriminated on because of the autism he likely had. Perhaps it would have been harder in the 21st century for his talent to come through - in the UK at least anyway.

As the film Gattaca goes, we now have discrimination down to a science. I think that is going to be true soon.

Gattaca was a pretty awesome society on the whole tbf. But back to Turing, i doubt that in this day and age he wouldn't be able to do mathematics - there are lots of people in many fields who have some form of autism. If you can prove theorems, people will take notice.

I mean to suggest that people with autism had it better in the 40s and 50s than they do now seems to me a bit of an outlandish statement.

During the war it would be all hands to the pump. The drive for any sort of exceptional ability that could help the war effort would trump everything else. Even the educational system back then may have been more suited to someone with exceptional talent, instead of what we have now where everything is watered down and the morons are the priority. With less discipline he may also have been more prone to bullying. The level of evolution at that time may also have been suited to Turing's skillset.

The UK is actually pretty pathetic at taking notice of talent in regards to autists. The USA is far better. Their culture and society is better geared to making the most of a talented autist. They have their cliques - jocks, nerds, cheerleaders etc. but they're more accepted for who there are. And they realise talented people will make an absolute fortune because it's a free for all where ability gets a very high premium - there is also the pressure to work in the USA, the number of autistic people in the UK not in full time work is over 80% (off the top of my head). Also in this country the vending machine repairman will get more money than an award winning scientist.

TBF pure science doesn't pay well anywhere. That statement is true here as well - unfortunately that's just the price youve always had to pay to be a scientist.

Alan Turing report cards: Alex Bellos Blog Archive Turing’s school reports

Ah a lot of that brings back memories from my own time at school. Except I was even lazier and disorganised rather than untidy. I used to lug around my bag with all of the books etc. I had, regardless of whether I needed them that day or not. Never took anything out and any homework was done at school, if at all.