sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) (11/14/83)
This Sunday's NYT Book Review has a review of a new biography of Alan Turing, "Alan Turing: The Enigma", by Andrew Hughes (Simon & Schuster, $22.50). Doug Hofstadter reviews the book. It's apparently the only substantial biography of Turing that has appeared in the thirty years since his death. Here is an excerpt from the review (copied without permission): "In the early 1950's, Turing's interest turned somewhat away from computers and mathematics and toward biology, and he might have looked forward to a long life pursuing his intellectual dreams. But, as he got older, he also became increasingly vocal about his sexual preferences, often ignoring the advice of friends to be more cautious. Turing's house was burglarized in 1952, and it was quickly clear to him that one of his occasional lovers was involved. In the course of making depositions to the police, Turing revealed his homosexuality. Instantly, the course of his life was irrevocably changed. "At that time in Britain there was a movement to look upon homosexuality as a disease caused by hormone imbalances and physicians had proposed various "cures." Turing was found guilty of homosexuality and was sentenced to "treatment" rather than jail. Regular injections of female sex hormones were given to him to quell his sex drive. Turing did not want to try to use any of his connections in government or the academic world to mitigate his sentence and he simply endured it, growing breasts and being rendered impotent by the time the treatment ended in a year. "The torment he endured, Mr. Hodges says, left permanent scars. For the next couple of years Turing appeared for the most part quite happy to his friends. But one day in 1954, he prepared a cyanide-coated apple, just as he had once seen the wicked witch do in Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Unlike her, he bit into his own apple, and he was found dead the next day. He planned it in such a way that his mother would interpret it as an "accident with chemicals," but others knew better. Although today all evidence strongly suggests that the machine known as Alan Mathison Turing halted itself of its own free will, the ultimate reason remains an enigma to us, an undecidable question."
notes@ucbcad.UUCP (11/19/83)
#R:bbncca:-30800:ucbesvax:32500005:000:405 ucbesvax!turner Nov 19 02:09:00 1983 C. Lehman-Haupt's review of "Alan Turing: The Enigma" has been posted to net.ai. The reviewer points out that it was the biographer's interest in repression of homosexuality that lead him to write a life of Turing. CL-H seems to think that this element is consequently a bit overplayed. (The whole review is a little condescending, but generally favorable.) --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)