Alan Turing's Suicide in Doubt

The man was a genius. He was largely responsible for creating the foundations of modern society in many ways, in his work with computation, cryptology, AI, and other fields.

"Of this type" means that he was an out of the box thinker and hard to predict. It in no ways should be understood as you are stating.

Then you don't understand the British ruling class of the time - everyone of them, judges, civil servants, politicians, army officers, would have had homosexual experiences at boarding school, not necessarily consentingly, but they were perfectly well used to homosexuals.

The problem as far as the establishment was concerned was that Turing had access to all the nation's secrets and he was inviting anyone home he fancied... That he was gay was just a pretext for what happened next.

"A man of his type" probably just meant "a mad scientist". The stereotype was as strong as ever at the time (thanks to Einstein and the nuclear-science culture of secrecy), and Turing fit it to a T: he dealt with concepts the average coroner couldn't even start to comprehend (advanced crypto, information theory, Frankenstein-style machinery full of valves and levers, experimental chemistry), he was a loner, socially awkward geek, who somehow didn't really like to hide his homosexual side like a proper Englishman would do (homosexual experiences were much more common at the type for the ruling class, due to boarding schools).

> This is surely crucial.

And worth investigating, surely? If it is genetic, then this may be testable via his relatives, or more intrusively, his remains.

Fortunately we do celebrate his achievements. The Turing Award is handed out for contribution to the field, not for overcoming persecution.

That's not mentioned by the article, yet it seems important.

4 ounces is 110 ml - a reasonably bug gulp. It's not the kind of dose that you'd get from accidentally licking your finger, or absent mindedly eating an apple that had rested in a splash of cyanide.

The article is right about modern inquests needing clear evidence before they record a verdict of suicide. But that was even more so in the past, when suicide was a crime, and much more likely to be seen as sinful.

Today most US states deny the right of marrying the person you love.

Which makes me wondering why are we feeling so strongly, as a human race, to regulate what other people are able to do (even in cases where it doesn't affect us) and to inflict punishment on those that break the social norms.

It's probably a combination of evolutionary traits, fear of unknown, desire for protection of self at the expense of others, and the desire to be in groups with similar characteristics of our own. Only lately it appears that we embraced 'diversity', where we respect the right of others to be, behave and think differently than our own ways, without feeling threatened by them or feeling the need to prosecute them.

Why is this happening only now and how can we make sure that we don't revert to the old ways? Part of it is history, I think - we're more aware now of the mistakes of the past, the world-wide wars, and the poverty effects of oppressive regimes. We also improved agriculture and technology to the point where most of us can have a decent living without stealing from others, conducting wars with our neighbors or by practicing slavery / communism. It might very well be the case of the famous saying, "you cannot do democracy on an empty stomach".

I only hope the trend will accelerate and that we'll be able to reap up the benefits of mutual respect and decency for human rights sooner rather than later. And never return to the past.

Well, chemical castration is still used to "combat" paedophilia. I'm pretty sure the Ancient Greeks and Romans would find that repulsive.

Now, I'm a child of my time, so I think homosexuality is OK, and I think paedophilia is a crime. But were I a child of, say, the thirties or forties, where in my youth fascist regimes burned homosexuals by the thousands, what would I say? Would I have the empathy, or the courage to understand and express against the strong sentiment of society my understanding for the gay cause?

I also want to note that "chemical castration" is a harsh term, and I find the treatment to be an interesting, indeed even acceptable, alternative to just straight incarceration. In the face of a force society considers dangerous to itself, it is a good thing that we can use medication to combat it — and we still do when applicable, for example also with psychopaths and other severe mental illnesses. That homosexuality was viewed as dangerous to society back then is certainly sad, even terrible. But how will people fifty years hence look onto our debates about whether to allow people to marry? How will they look onto our treatment of socially not accepted sexual deviants. Social ousting, sex offenders list, incarceration, the eroding of free speech in the name of reducing just the chances of sexually "deviant" activity?

People back then did what they did because they thought it right. It is not what they did that we should find repulsive, because their methods are by and large the same we employ today when faced with similar value judgements. It is the why. Homosexuality is not a mental illness. We have finally learned this, and I hope it won't take more than the dying out of the current generation of politicians for society at large to accept this.

(I'm sorry to have drawn a parallel between homosexuality and paedophilia — I'm not meaning to suggest any similarity between the two on a biological or indeed conceptual level. I wanted to explain my view that the concept of homosexuality in the society of the 50s was indeed a similar one to the concept of paedophilia today.)

Hear hear. It's a dismissive and flippant assertion of the kind made by a people who deservedly feel guilty. The "chemical castration" was an option created by people who were clearly willing to do worse. No doubt the behavior of the Cambridge Five created a climate justifying suspicion by "the type so inclined".

> "mysterious circumstances"

"His decomposing naked remains were found in a red North Face bag, padlocked from the outside, in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom."

The mystery being how he managed to lock the bag from the inside.

I don't know if you have any information not in the Wikipedia article but I don't see anything there suggesting suicide was ever considered as a possibility. All is see is the police and coroner saying he was murdered but they don't know who did it.

He was convicted two years before he died.

We can't know, we will never know and all speculation is facile and pointless. Your speculation, based on nothing other than a BBC web page doubly so.

Right, if you look at what Tyler Clementi was saying on and offline before he committed suicide you'll see the same sort of thing. (not trying to draw too many comparisons here)

Which of Copeland's claims do you dispute? I assume those statements about what he said at varous times a d about his chemical experiments are true. From there, I find Copeland's conclusion perfectly reasonable:

"The thing is to tell the truth in so far as we know it, and not to speculate."

"In a way we have in modern times been recreating the narrative of Turing's life, and we have recreated him as an unhappy young man who committed suicide. But the evidence is not there."*

"The exact circumstances of Turing's death will probably always be unclear," Prof Copeland concludes."