eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (02/17/86)
I heard something to the effect that this was how Alan Turing committed suicide (note a sub note to net.suicide). I have yet to look it up, but what I heard from what was "a reliable source...." was that Turing refined the poison, coated an apple, and took a bite. Supposedily with dramatic flair. I was thinking of holding a "net.party" in 2000 AD over AI-List to toast Turing's Philosophy paper which is now known as the Turing test. Just an idea to make the 50th anniversry of it's publication. I'll have to check up on his cause of death. From the Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers: --eugene miya NASA Ames Research Center {hplabs,ihnp4,dual,hao,decwrl,allegra}!ames!aurora!eugene eugene@ames-nas.ARPA p.s. my cat's out of his bag.
andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews) (02/18/86)
In article <1401@ames.UUCP> eugene@ames.UUCP writes: >...what I heard from what was "a reliable source...." was that Turing >refined the poison, coated an apple, and took a bite. This is the theory of Andrew Hodges, the author of Turing's biography, _Alan Turing: The Enigma_. If I remember correctly, Hodges believed himself to be the first person to put forward this theory. We know that there was a half-eaten apple beside Turing's bed, and that he died of poisoning, but no one bothered to test the apple for poison. There is still some question of whether Turing committed suicide, but finding poison on the apple would seem to confirm this. The connection between eating apples and the sexual "sins" for which Turing was vilified is just too strong to be coincidental. --Jamie. ...!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews "Dr. Parkinson declared 'I'm not surprised to see you here'"