notes@ucbcad.UUCP (10/19/83)
#N:ucbesvax:32500002:000:852 ucbesvax!turner Oct 14 00:38:00 1983 A recent issue of New Scientist has an article about Alan Turing that brought to light some details of his life that I had not known about before. One thing that he was a visionary computer architect. He himself tended to play this down, since he was interested in computers by way of theory, and never formally published his (rather influential) designs. Another, very tragic "detail": he died in disgrace, ousted from the intelligence technocracy that his ideas helped to create. It seems that he was gay. He was, in fact, prosecuted for his "perversion", and chose what is described in the article as "chemical castration" over serving time in prison. This might have had something to do with his death, as well: he committed suicide not many years later. He'd be about 70 now, if he had lived. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)
shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs) (10/23/83)
How interesting - I once tried to find out some details about Turing's life and death, and that fact was carefully suppressed... what some people won't do to force others to conform... stan the l.h. utah-cs!shebs