Four brilliant mathematicians whose genius has profoundly affected us but which drove them insane. [bbc]

> from the psychiatry standpoint homosexuality is a pathology too

But what the fuck isn't?

"from the psychiatry standpoint homosexuality is a pathology too"

Not any more, but in Turing's time yes.

I don't know, I start to change for the worse when I isolate myself from all people while programming for a very long time. Good thing we have the internet these days.

And Turing's "insanity" has a lot more to do with the diabolical treatment he received at the hands of the British authorities; indeed, his suicide was arguably the rational act of a rational man.

(I'd hoped the BBC were above such sensationalism; I guess the memory of that old fascist Reith has now been thoroughly pissed upon.)

I wouldn't. There are many flaws in this book, but the main one is he gets facts wrong, both biographical and mathematical. For example, he writes that Turing died of a lab accident when in fact he committed suicide. He also tries to define consistency for all formal systems, and does so with outlandish philosophy involving "all possible universes". In fact, consistency (or inconsistency) is a property only of formal systems based on propositional logic--a subset of all formal systems--and it's easy to define mathematically. I can only imagine how many inaccuracies are in it that I wasn't able to spot.