By what process of becoming did I myself finally appear in the world?

Introduction

“If you think this is going to be a history lesson, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

Or, so says Christopher Morcom at the start of our play. This Actor Packet is ​ the history lesson to accompany Single Carrot’s 2019 production of Pink Milk ​ by Ariel Zetina, directed by Ben Kleymeyer. Here you will find information about the life and work of Alan Turing; elaborations on his relationships with Christopher Morcom, Joan Clarke, Arnold Murray and his parents; and an immersive look into the world in which Alan lived. Comments from me, your dramaturg, are throughout to offer connections between this biographical survey and the text of our play. While Pink Milk is ​ ​ not a history lesson, connecting the journey within the play to the rich facts of Alan’s life can help us map out “the process of becoming” by which Alan the man and Alan the character “finally appear” in both the world we live in and the world we’re creating.

Please, feel free to reach out to me any time with questions, research requests, or conversations about what you read here. Thank you for letting me be part of your process of becoming.

Many Thanks, Abby

NOTES: Photo captions are in the alt-text for each photo. Hover over the photo to read the caption. AT:TE is for Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges; TMWKTM is for The Man ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Who Knew Too Much by David Leavitt. ​

1 Table of Contents

Introduction

Table of Contents

Alan Turing Biography

Additional Resources Alan Turing Biography Timeline

Other Characters

Christopher Morcom Mr. and Mrs. Turing Arnold Murray Joan Murray (née Clarke) Alan’s Work Papers On Computable Numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem Computing Machinery and Intelligence The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis Machines

History Timeline - Homosexuality and the Law in Britain “Treatments” Organotherapy Conversion Therapy

2 Alan Turing Biography

Andrew Hodges, Author of Alan Turing: The Enigma features an excellent biographical article ​ ​ on his webpage: link here. ​ ​ Additional Resources Texts Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges ​ The Man Who Knew Too Much

Videos SciShow: Great Minds - Alan Turing Excerpt from Breaking the Code - Derek Jacobi as Alan Turing ​ ​ ​ "Stories of Life and Death" Lecture by Andrew Hodges on Alan Turing to the Skeptics Society ​ (fairly long, but great overview of Hodges’ book.) Lecture to the Royal Society by Andrew Hodges in 2012 ​ Alan Turing Biography Timeline 1873 Julius Turing, Alan’s father, born.

1881 Ethel Sara Stoney, Alan’s mother born.

1912 June 23 - Alan Mathison Turing born in London to Julius and ​ Ethel Sara Turing. He has one older brother, John.

1926 Aged 14, he was sent to Sherborne School in Dorset. His first day of term coincided with the 1926 General Strike. Turing was so determined not to miss his first day of school that he cycled the 97km (60 miles) from his home in Southampton. His teachers worried that he leaned too heavily towards maths and science, at the expense of the classics. The headmaster wrote to his parents: "If he is to be solely a scientific specialist, he is wasting his time at a public school".

1927

3 At the age of 16, Turing got to grips with Albert Einstein's work and extrapolated Einstein's questioning of Newton's Laws of Motion from a text in which this was never made explicit.

1930 Turing's close school friend Christopher Morcom dies suddenly from bovine tuberculosis. Turing renounces his religious faith and becomes an atheist.

1931 Turing goes to study Mathematics at King's College, Cambridge.

1935 Turing wins a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, and takes the Mathematics degree with distinction. He thrives in a culture that encourages his scientific interests and as a young gay man he also finds protection in the liberal ambiance the college provided. At just 22, he is elected to a Fellowship. Turing is already on track for a distinguished career in pure mathematics. Yet his unusual interest in finding practical uses for abstract mathematical ideas pushes him in an altogether different direction.

1936 Turing publishes his paper “On Computable Numbers and an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem)”. Turing analyses what it meant for a human to follow a definite method or procedure to perform a task. For this purpose, he invents the idea of a ‘Universal Machine’ that could decode and perform any set of instructions. This is an idealised computing device that is capable of performing any mathematical computation that can be represented as an algorithm. Ten years later he will turn this revolutionary idea into a practical plan for an electronic computer, capable of running any program.

1936-1938 Turing spends time at Princeton in the US studying under Alonzo Church. There he starts to study cryptology as well as mathematics. In 1938 he receives his PhD; his dissertation is called Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals and introduced original logic and relative computing.

Alan sees Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. ​ ​

September - Turing starts to work part-time at the Government ​ Code and Cypher School.

4 1939 September - Germany goes to war with Poland followed by England and France. ​

The day after war is declared, Turing arrives at Bletchley Park. There he works with Gordon Welchman to develop the Bombe, a device for decrypting the messages sent by Germans using their Enigma machines. The Bombe built on a machine that the Polish had already made, called the Bomba Kryptlogiczna. Turing used statistical techniques to optimise the trial of different possibilities in the code-breaking process using probability.

1941 June - Germany goes to war with the Soviet Union. ​ December - The United States joins the war against Germany and Japan. ​

Turing’s section at Bletchley Park, ‘Hut 8’, masters the German submarine communication system that was vital to the battle of the Atlantic.

In the course of this exciting work he finds the friendship of another mathematician, Joan Clarke. Turing proposes to her, but immediately told her of his ‘homosexual tendencies’, and the engagement soon ends. After this, he becomes more confident in developing his homosexual life. Meanwhile, the war takes a new turn as America joins the war.

1942 Turing is sent to the US as part of an intelligence collaboration. He shares what he knew about Enigma in return for being allowed to inspect the speech encryption system being set up to allow conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt. Turing is somewhat dismissive of US cryptanalysis, believing the Americans to rely too heavily on machinery instead of thought.

1941-43 Turing and colleagues manage to break the more complicated German Naval Enigma system. This is extremely helpful for the Allies during the Battle of the Atlantic as it could help them avoid the fearsome German U-boats, which had been responsible for sinking more than 700 Allied ships with 2.3 million tons of vital cargo.

1944 Turing worked on other technical innovations during the war – in particular, a system to encrypt and decrypt spoken telephone conversations. Codenamed Delilah, it was successfully demonstrated using a recording of one of Winston Churchill's speeches, but was never used in action. However, it gave Turing hands-on experience of working with electronics, and led to a

5 position at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), where he worked on what he sometimes described as an ‘electronic brain’.

1945 At the end of World War II, Turing is awarded an OBE for his services to his country

October - Turing joined the National ​ Physical Laboratory where he worked on developing an electronic digital stored-program computing machine that would later become the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine). By 1946 he had a finished proposal for the computer, but NPL did not have the resources to turn it into reality.

1947 Turing returns to Cambridge for a sabbatical year.

1948 June 21 - The Small-Scale Experimental ​ Machine (SSEM) or “Baby” makes its first ​ ​ successful run of a program.

1949 Turing became deputy director of the Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, working on software for one of the earliest stored program computers – the Manchester Mark 1, built from the Baby. He also explored the problem of artificial intelligence and proposed an experiment (in his seminal paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”) which became that attempted to define a standard for machine intelligence, which would later become known as the Turing Test. The core idea was that a computer could be said to "think" if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human being.

1950 The Pilot ACE is built in Alan’s absence from NPL and executes its first program on 10 May 1950.

1951 Alan Turing is elected to the Royal Society for his definition of the theory of computability in 1936.

6 1952 Without a computer powerful enough to execute his chess program, Turing played a game in which he simulated the computer, taking about half an hour to perform each move.

January - Turing meets a 19 year-old man called Arnold Murray and invites him over to his ​ house. Murray visits Turing's house on a number of occasions, staying the night. Murray later helps an accomplice break into Turing's house. Turing reports the crime and admits having a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts are illegal in the UK and so both were charged with gross indecency. Turing is given the choice of being imprisoned or chemically castrated with oestrogen hormone injections. He chooses the latter. Turing's conviction means his security clearance is removed which means he is barred from his cryptopgraphic consultancy for the British government.

1953 Alan takes trips abroad to Greece and Norway where he could meet men and have sex without fear of prosecution. He had also previously traveled to Paris on several occasions.

1954 June 8 - Alan Turing found dead in his home. An ​ inquest rules that his death was by suicide though his mother and some friends maintain that his death was accidental.

1970s Information about Bletchley Park and Alan’s ​ ​ codebreaking work is declassified. (Fun fact: there’s a cute easter egg when you Google Bletchley Park!)

2009 Prime Minister Gordon Brown issues a formal apology for Alan Turing’s treatment, saying, “I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly.”

2012 The last of Alan Turing’s papers on his codebreaking work during the war are declassified.

A public petition for a royal pardon for Alan Turing is rejected because “A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence. He would have known that his offence was against the law and that he would be prosecuted.”

2013 December 24 - A royal pardon is issued for Alan Turing’s Gross Indecency charges. Criticisms ​ are voiced for pardoning one man when thousands still had convictions on their records for laws since overturned.

7 2017 The “Alan Turing Law” pardons thousands of living and deceased gay men convicted under overturned laws. “Welcoming the new law, the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said: ‘This pardon is an important, valuable advance that will remedy the grave injustices suffered by many of the estimated 50,000 to 100,000 men who were convicted under discriminatory anti-gay laws between 1885 and 2003 – the latter being the year when all homophobic sexual offences legislation was finally repealed in England and Wales.’”

Sources Timeline by Hodges Wired Timeline Royal Pardon More Royal Pardon “Alan Turing Law”

8 Other Characters

Christopher Morcom Born in 1911 to a “wealthy, vigorous, scientific and artistic” family, Christopher Morcom was Alan Turing’s first love and a golden boy all around. Turing Biographer Andrew Hodges notes, “The institutions that were for Alan such stumbling blocks had been for Christopher Morcom instruments of almost effortless advance, the source of scholarships, prizes and praise ...he was surprisingly small for his form. (He was a year older than Alan and a year ahead in the school, but fair-haired and slight.) It was also, however, because he ‘wanted to look again at his face, he felt so attracted.” (quotes throughout this section from Alan Turing: The Enigma. ​ ​ See scans of P.46-59 for more details.) ​ ​

A year older and a form (grade) more advanced than Alan, Christopher accepted Alan’s attention with bemusement at first and their friendship grew as they traded ideas in chemistry class and studied together in the library. Christopher was indeed a fine piano player and regularly attended a gramophone club at Sherborne - to which Alan also came with his roommate, despite not having much of an interest in music himself.

There is no evidence that Alan’s romantic feelings for Christopher were reciprocal, but the two had a deep connection nevertheless. “He had a great power in practical work of finding out just what was the best way of doing anything,” says Alan in a letter to his mother, “One cannot help admiring such powers and I certainly wanted to be able to do that kind of thing myself.” Christopher’s academic achievement pushed Alan to perform in school and to refine his independent scientific experiments. The two shared results of their respective experiments and traded records of comet sightings and their personal friendship deepened through their mutual love of science.

Romantic or not, there was certainly no lack of affection between the boys. Alan later recalled in a letter, an evening “when he was waiting outside the labs, and when I came too, he grasped me with his big hand and took me out to see the stars.” (Alan made a star map from a spherical lamp shade to keep up with Christopher’s observations of the heavens.) Christopher even invited Alan to meet his mother, a sculptor, and to come to the Clock House, the Morcom home in Worcestershire, to see Christopher’s beloved 4-inch telescope. Christopher’s older brother, Rupert, was also of a scientific mind and was working as a researcher in Germany at the time

9 Christopher and Alan were in school. Alan soon returned the invitation, asking Christopher to visit his family in Guildford, but prior plans interfered.

Christopher and Alan’s relationship reached a kind of peak when the two of them traveled to Cambridge to take scholarship exams for Trinity College, the scientific center of Britain. “In Cambridge they could live the lives of young gentlemen for a week, with rooms of their own and no lights-out,” says Hodges. The two ate in the hall and played games with other Sherburnians, Christopher pushing the limits of curfew to tease Alan and Alan subtly testing Christopher’s desire for his company. Alan called it “the happiest week of my life.” In the end, Christopher won a scholarship; Alan did not. Christopher wrote to Alan when the younger boy wondered if he should try for a less rigorous college, “I should prefer personally that you came to Trinity where I should see more of you.”

However, Christopher was never to make it to Cambridge. He died on February 13, 1930 of complications from bovine tuberculosis after being taken to London by ambulance from Sherborne six days earlier and undergoing two operations. He contracted the disease from tainted milk he drank as a child at the Clock House.

Alan was devastated. His mother, teachers, and the Morcom family all noted how intensely Alan felt his loss and sought to help him cope. The Morcoms invited him on a cruise vacation later that year and Alan corresponded extensively with Mrs. Morcom in helping her compile a remembrance book.

Following Christopher’s death, Alan wrote an essay titled “The Nature of Spirit” (Scan of ​ P.82-87) for Mrs. Morcom on the connection between the body and the spirit and what might ​ happen to the spirit after death. With this line of metaphysical thinking, Alan was trying to both fit Christopher’s death into his burgeoning scientific worldview and find proof that Christopher was not gone from him forever. Another source explores this further: ​ ​

“As his conversations with Mrs. Morcom reveal, he longed to understand what had become of Christopher, of that essential aspect of him: mind. Of course once a question piqued Alan’s interest, he focused with singular obsession. And any field of knowledge that might bear relevance had to be explored, its concepts recombined in ways totally his own. Thus he immersed himself in related works of biology, philosophy, metaphysics, and even mathematical logic and quantum mechanics. And because he so enjoyed tinkering with and redesigning various gizmos and mechanical parts, it was natural to him to think about the mind as an intelligent machine, one whose processes could be modeled and predicted with mathematical logic.

Here we see how Alan’s relationship with Christopher put him on his personal and scientific paths alike. Without Christopher’s influence, Alan might never have focused his brilliant mind into scientific exchange. Likewise, without Christopher’s death, Alan might never have had to

10 wonder what happened to his first partner in the great conversation about the nature of the world.

Alan’s Remembrances Alan’s letters to his mother and to Christopher’s mother show how deeply Christopher had affected him:

● “I often think about how like I am to Christopher in a few ways through which we became real friends, and I wonder if I am left to do something that he has been called away from…

● “My most vivid recollections of Christopher are almost entirely the kind things he said to me sometimes. Of course I simply worshipped the ground he trod on - a thing which I did not make much attempt to disguise, I am sorry to say.

● “I feel sure that I shall meet Morcom again somewhere and that here will be some work for us to do together, and as I believed there was for us to do here. Now that I am left to do it alone I must not let him down but put as much energy into it, if not as much interest, as if he were still here.

● “I am sure I could not have found anywhere another companion so brilliant and yet so charming and unconceited. I regarded my interest in my work, and in such things as astronomy (to which he introduced me) as something to be shared with him and I think he felt a little the same about me ... I know I must put as much energy if not as much interest into my work as if he were alive, because that is what he would like me to do.

● “It never seems to have occured to me to try and make any other friends besides Morcom, he made everyone seem so ordinary…”

11 Mr. and Mrs. Turing Alan Turing’s parents, Julius and Ethel Sara Turing, lived in both the zenith and decline of the British Empire, greatly influencing their expectations for their children and themselves. Because Julius’s work was in government in India, the couple spent much of their sons’ childhoods there, leaving the boys in the care of a retired colonel and his family.

Ethel Sara Stoney was born in India in 1881. Throughout her life, she was preoccupied with her family’s class standing and the success of her two sons. Sara, who went by her second name after her husband’s death, tried to take strong interest in her youngest son’s scientific work. While at Sherborne, Alan even shared his organization of Einstein’s relativity theories with her, despite her inability to understand it as he did. She aided him througout his life in the mundane but necessary work to support his work.

As an adult, “Alan would visit Guildford about twice a year, annoying both mother and brother by announcing his imminent arrival with a telegram or postcard and no more. His mother made the journey to Wilmslow once in the summer each year.” Alan “complained to his friends of her patronising fussiness and religiosity,” but their bond remained strong. Even after his conviction, Sara stood by Alan. Some believe that the ambiguity surrounding the circumstances of Alan’s suicide was staged by him to allow his mother to believe his death was an accident.

Julius Turing was born in England in 1873. One of many children of a minister, his childhood was defined by “enforced economy” that he was never able to shake and he passed on that frugality to his sons. As a young man, he was “a model of success”, rising quickly in the British government of the Madras province of India. Julius had issues with authority, despite being an agent of the Empire, and he retired early from the Civil Service - yet tax issues prevented him and Sara moving back to England until terms of British governance in India changed. He spent the rest of his life unstimulated and unfulfilled and he died in 1947. (Quotes from AT:TE) ​ ​

Further Reading "My Brother, The Genius", previously unpublished article by Alan’s brother, John (1908-1983), ​ looking back on their upbringing.

12 Arnold Murray Little is known about Arnold Murray, the 19-year-old man whose affair with Alan Turing led to both of their convictions with Gross Indecency. Regarding his upbringing, “Like many working-class youths at the time, Arnold was both underfed and more or less penniless,” and, “His father, a concrete layer when in work, knocked his mother about,” is the bulk of what biographers can find.

We have more about Arnold at 19 from Hodges: “Arnold was searching for an identity, and thought the world owed him something better than life at the bottom of the heap. He had tried science - at fourteen he had blown out the windows with a chemistry-set concoction. He had tried sex, with various experiences since that age. He was not a person with freedom or consistency of mind. He dreamt of a perfect relationship with a woman, but on the other hand liked the absence, when with men, of any sense of putting on a performance. He was also conscious of being called a ‘Mary Ann’ for intelligence and sensitivity. Middle class men offered him manners and culture, and at this point of development, homosexuality seemed something that belonged to an elite to which he aspired. He looked down on those who offered themselves simply for cash. Alan offered such a promise of association with gracious living - but this was not the whole story, for Alan combined this with a freshness and youthfulness that stood out on the Oxford Street background.

Hodges goes on (p.568-573 and Chapter 8) to describe Alan and Arnold’s relationship in detail. ​ The two had a connection - Arnold wanting to know more and to elevate himself, Alan wanting to help him - but their different economic circumstances came between them. Arnold balked at a direct gift of money after their first night together, but he took money from Alan’s wallet and came back to Alan for 3, then 7 pounds more in the following weeks. When Alan found his house burgled, he logically suspected Arnold and wrote to him to break up the relationship. Arnold responded by confronting Alan at his home and saying a friend of Arnold’s may have been responsible for the robbery. Their association rekindled, Alan went to the police with Arnold’s information about his friend - confirming any suspicions the authorities might have had about Alan and Arnold’s relationship after the initial call about the robbery and revealing a different crime.

Arnold and Alan were charged with the exact same crimes and both pleaded guilty. Arnold’s lawyer defended him as “an innocent led astray by the wiles of an older man,” and Arnold did not go to jail. He died in 1989 after living a more or less normal life complete with a marriage, two children, a divorce and a career as a musician.

13 Joan Murray (née Clarke) Born in 1917, Joan Clarke was recruited from her mathematics degree at Newnham College, Cambridge by her former professor. Joan was “congenial but shy, gentle and kind, ​ non-aggressive and always subordinate to the men in her life; qualities that would allow her to conform within the male dominated world of Bletchley Park.”

There were many women, WRNs, mainly, at Bletchley - at a ratio of 8:1 against the men - operating and servicing machines with little idea of what their tasks added up to. Not Joan. Though she did the same high-level analytical work as her male counterparts, Joan could not hold the title of cryptanalyist or earn the same pay. She instead was called a “linguist,” despite knowing no foreign languages, and was paid 2 pounds a week (then about $8) when she started. Joan was the only woman on a team of nine working with a special decoding technique devised by Alan Turing.

Joan and Alan From this Biography ​

“In the spring of 1941, Joan Clarke developed a close friendship with her Hut 8 colleague Alan Turing. Clarke and Turing had actually met previously to working at Bletchley Park, as Turing was a friend of her older brother. For a time, they became inseparable, Turing arranged their shifts so they could work together and they spent many of their leave days together. Soon after this blossoming friendship, Turing proposed marriage and Clarke accepted. However, a few days after the proposal, Turing told her ‘to not count on it working out as he had homosexual tendencies.’

“Turing expected this to be the end of their affair, but Clarke was undeterred by his declaration, and their engagement continued. To understand her decision to continue with the engagement following his disclosure, it has to be made clear that during this period in history, marriage for many women, was considered a social duty and it was not necessary that marriage should correspond with sexual desires.

14 “Clarke was formally introduced to Alan Turing's family and vice versa, he gave her an engagement ring, although she did not wear it when in the Hut, choosing to keep their engagement secret from their colleagues. They talked of the future and Turing told her of his desire to have children. They shared many interests, both were keen chess players and, as Clarke had studied Botany at school, she could become involved with Turing's life long enthusiasm of the growth and form of plant life.

“In the late summer of 1941, following a holiday in North Wales, their engagement ended by mutual consent, because of Turing's belief that the marriage would be a failure because of his homosexuality. Clarke was to remain friends with Turing for the rest of his life. Years later, after they had both left Bletchley Park, Turing revealed in a letter to Clarke that he "did occasionally practice" his homosexuality and that he had been ‘found out’.

After Bletchley Joan became Deputy Head of Hut 8 in early 1944 and continued to lead the Naval Enigma codebreaking team until the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. Joan was awarded Member of the British Empire in 1947 for her codebreaking work. She continued to work for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) after the war, where she met her eventual husband, Lieutenant-Colonel J. “Jock” K. R. Murray. The couple moved to Scotland soon after their marriage in 1952 where Joan picked up a productive interest in numismatics, the study of the history of currency. They returned to the south of England in 1962 and Joan rejoined GCHQ until her retirement in 1977. She died in 1996.

More Resources AMS Biography Video: Interview on her engagement to Alan ​ On her codebreaking work

15 Alan’s Work

Papers Alan’s academic work was constantly evolving and moving between pure theories of mathematics to practical applications in the new field of computer science and unraveling mysteries of biology. Note: paper titles are links to the texts of the papers themselves.

On Computable Numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem Alan’s first major paper came in 1936 just after he had been elected a Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge. The idea for the work came from a lecture on the work of Kurt Gödel, a young Czech mathematician.

Gödel had cracked open a new realm of mathematics, having proven with the investigation of mathematical paradoxes that no system of mathematics was “complete, in the ​ ​ technical sense that every statement (such as ‘every integer is the sum of four squares’) could either be proved, or disproved” and no system of mathematics was “consistent, in the sense that ​ ​ the statement ‘2+2=5’ could never be arrived at by a sequence of valid steps of proof.” One formalist assertion remained: “was mathematics decideable? By this [mathematican David ​ ​ Hilbert] meant, did there exist a definite method which could, in principle, be applied to any assertion and which was guaranteed to produce a correct decision as to whether that assertion was true.” The stage was set for another brilliant mind to break math the rest of the way.

The final question of decideability, in German the Entscheidungsproblem, is what Alan tackled ​ ​ in his paper. Alan applied a mechanical approach by imagining a machine doing the work of a human computer. The machine consists of an infinitely long storage tape off of which the machine scans a series of 0s and 1s and onto which the machine can write or erase numbers. The machine follows a series of commands to read and manipulate the input - which is a coded algorithm - to determine whether or not the problem is solvable/computable/decideable. More on this basic Turing Machine in this video. ​ ​ ​ ​

Alan then took the idea a step further by imagining a Universal Turing Machine that read the ​ ​ ​ programs of other Turing Machines and performed those machines’ tasks. This idea introduced

16 two of the fundamental concepts in computer science: the universal computer - that anything ​ ​ computable by a machine is also computable by a human, and stored memory and programs. ​

In the world of our play, we can see connections to Alan’s earliest ideas of a computer and the robot Otto in the machines’ abilities to follow commands and perform tasks (like playing music) that one might not immediately expect from a machine.

Further Reading from Hodges’ compiled bibliography. ​ Computing Machinery and Intelligence In 1950, Alan wrote his most famous and controversial paper for the philosophical journal Mind ​ following a radio debate about machine intelligence the previous year. In it, he proposed not asking “Can machines think,” but instead asking “can a machine appear to think as a human ​ ​ does?” - the beginnings of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Alan proposed “the ‘imitation game,’ now ​ ​ known as the Turing test: a ​ ​ remote human interrogator, within a fixed time frame, must distinguish between a computer and a human subject based on their replies to various questions posed by the interrogator. By means of a series of such tests, a computer’s success at ‘thinking’ can be measured by its probability of being misidentified as the human subject.” (Encyclopedia Britannica) ​ ​ Even more fascinating, in introducing the imitation game premise, Alan describes a game in which subject A is a man, subject B is a woman, and both are trying to convince the interrogator that they are the woman.

The Turing Test has captured imaginations ever since its proposal. There are numerous critiques of it as a real measure of success in Artificial Intelligence, especially in attempts to create machines and programs that can “pass” the test. Alan himself said that it would only be likely for a machine to fool judges 30% of the time after 50 years of AI development and it would take at least 100 years before a computer could pass for a human without question.

17 In the meantime, the Turing Test continues to be productively applied philosophically and practically. CAPTCHAs, which we all have encountered online, are reverse versions of the Turing Test - a computer trying to tell if a user is a human or another computer. The name is an initialism of Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Further Resources Video further explaining the Turing Test. ​ Essay exploring the Star Trek: The Next Generation character Data as a Turing Test subject. ​ ​ ​ Hodges' Bibliography Article on Sophia Hanson, the Robot (Just for fun and to creep you out about AI) ​ The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis

In 1952, after revolutionizing computer science and sowing the seeds of AI, Alan turned his attention to another problem: In the beginnings of life, how does an organism decide which direction in which to grow? Using the Manchester computer, Alan explored mathematical descriptions of the chemical structures leading to the formation of the bodies of animals and plants, or, morphogenesis. The questions of how a leopard gets its spots, how a bundle of ​ ​ cells grows a spine, how everything from leaves on stems to pinecones to coral formations follow the Fibonacci sequence now had a theory to explain them.

What’s more, researchers at Brandeis University in 2014 found experimental evidence ​ ​ supporting Alan’s groundbreaking theories: “He theorized that identical biological cells differentiate, change shape and create patterns through a process called intercellular reaction-diffusion. In this model, a system of chemicals react with each other and diffuse across a space -- say between cells in an embryo. These chemical reactions need an inhibitory agent, to suppress the reaction, and an excitatory agent, to activate the reaction. This chemical reaction, diffused across an embryo, will create patterns of chemically different cells. Turing predicted six different patterns could arise from this model.

Further Resources MinuteEarth Video Hodges' Bibliography Citizen Research on Sunflowers corroborating Alan’s predictions. ​

18 Machines The machines in the play, Otto, ACE, Axiom, and Baby, are each inspired by real machines ​ ​ and computers Alan worked on or developed. While the characters do not directly correlate to these machines, we see how Alan’s feelings and ideas about machines evolved over time in the play as well.

Bombes - Connections to Axiom “The Turing-Welchman Bombe machine was an ​ ​ electro-mechanical device used to break Enigma-enciphered messages about enemy military operations during the Second World War. The first Bombe - Victory - started code-breaking on Bletchley Park on 14 March 1940 and by the end of the war almost 1676 female WRNS and 263 male RAF personnel were involved in the deployment of 211 Bombe machines… Throughout the war, the operation built around 211 Bombe machines broke many keys on a daily basis. Huge amounts of intercepted traffic were deciphered, supplying invaluable information about enemy operations.” (from The National Museum of Computing)

While not a computer, per se, Alan’s work with the Bombes built upon the mechanization of his ideas in “Computable Numbers”. “Turing's attack was based on the use of ‘cribs’ (comparing patterns of the encrypted message and a known portion of plain text) to break the key. This approach was aided by the fact that no letter on the Enigma could be represented by itself in an enciphered message.”

Video demonstration of a Bombe at Bletchley Park ​

19 ACE In 1945, Alan joined the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), located in the London suburb of Teddington, to lead a team in the race to build the first working computer. His 1946 report on his plans for ​ ​ the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) outlines plans for a powerful machine based on his ideas for a Universal Turing Machine. However, the administrative structure of NPL was not conducive to Alan’s working style of bridging mathematics and engineering, and he soon became frustrated with the slow progress. Alan resigned in 1948 after a sabbatical year at Cambridge to work with his old colleague, Max Newman, on the computer at Manchester University. Following leadership changes at NPL, a “Pilot ACE,” a scaled-down version of Alan’s planned machine, was up and ​ ​ running by 1950.

Press Clippings about the announcement of the ACE plans. ​

“Baby,” The Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine Though Alan did not directly take part in building the computer at Manchester University, his work refining and programming the machine called “Baby” led to great advancements in computer science. “Turing used codebreaking technology from Bletchley Park to get the computer working properly, designing an input–output system based on the same punched paper tape that ran through Colossus,” says Jack Copeland, Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing. Copeland also says, “He designed a programming system for the computer, and wrote the world’s first programming manual. Thanks to Turing, the first electronic universal computing machine was open for business.”

Other accounts of Alan at Manchester say watching him work the machine - with a large rotating memory drum, clicking switches, and an alarm horn - was like watching someone play an organ. Indeed, Copeland was involved in the restoration of a recording of computer music made with ​ ​ Baby by Alan and his colleague, Christopher Strachey.

Accounts of those who worked on Baby Technical Information on Baby

20 History

This section gives an overview of what the world was like during Alan’s life with a focus on LGBTQIA+ history and perspectives.

Timeline - Homosexuality and the Law in Britain ​ 1533 - The Buggery Act of 1533 - Sodomy punishable by execution ​ ​ ​ 1885 - The Labouchere Amendment - Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 - ​ ​ outlaw​s homosexual acts between men

1895 - Playwright Oscar Wilde convicted of Gross Indecency and sentenced to two years hard labor ​

1951 - Two of the “Cambridge Five” spy ring - who also happen to be gay - defect to Russia, ​ ​ inflami​ng government and public concerns about the security risk posed by homosexual people in government.

1952 - Alan Turing and Arnold Murray convicted of Gross Indecency ​ 1954 - 1,069 men with an average age of 37 in England and Wales under arrest for Gross Indece​ ncy. The Wolfenden Committee formed to examine the application and impact of British laws regarding homosexuality.

1957 - The Wolfenden Report issued. The committee ultimately recommended that ​ ​ "homo​sexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence," leading to the overturning of anti-homosexuality laws.

1958 - The Homosexual Law Reform Society was founded to campaign for the legalisation of same-s​ ex relationships in the UK. A letter written to The Times in 1958 by Tony Dyson, an academic, called for the Wolfenden Report’s recommendations to be reconsidered.

1967 - Sexual Offences Act 1967 - decriminalised homosexual acts between two men, both over th​ e age of 21, in private. The age of consent was set at 21 (compared to 16 for heterosexuals and lesbians). Homosexual acts taking place in the presence of more than two people however, were deemed not ‘in private’ to prevent premises being used for communal activities. The Act only applied to England and Wales.

1968 - In the 1950s and 1960s many therapists employed aversion therapy to ‘cure’ male homos​ exuality. The DSM-II listings were adopted by the World Health Organization and used as a standard worldwide. By including homosexuality in its list of mental disorders, many gay and

21 bisexual men and women in the UK would suffer humiliating and painful treatments in order to be ‘cured’.

1981 - A Northern Irish court found that Northern Ireland’s criminalisation of same-sex acts violate​d the European Convention on Human Rights Article 8 which states that everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life including his home and correspondence.

1992 - The WHO removed homosexuality from its lists of mental disorders. ​ 2013 - Alan Turing Pardoned of his charges of Gross Indecency ​ ​ ​ 2017 - The “Alan Turing” Law - pardons thousands of men convicted under the gross ​ ​ indece​ncy laws

United States LGBTQ+ History Timeline

“Treatments” Throughout history, homosexual people - especially men - have been executed, ostracized, and imprisoned when their sexual identities or behaviors were discovered. Alan faced a choice between imprisonment or organotherapy after his conviction, but he also saw a Jungian psychiatrist in the years between then and his death.

Out of these historical responses to individuals not fitting societal sexual norms, medical and psychological “treatments” have persisted in the West. This section offers a brief examination of their origins, applications, and results.

Organotherapy Broadly, organotherapy is the “treatment of disease with extracts from animal organs, especially glands.” It can be used to in conjunction with other drugs or therapies to treat numerous actual diseases, but in no study was it found to effectively “reverse” homosexuality. Hormone therapies were new science when Alan had them in 1950, hormones themselves only having been discovered in the late 1800s. Organotheraputic regimens were administered by injection, pill, and implant - Alan received the latter two over his year of treatment rather than injections.

Physically, he grew breasts, gained weight, and became impotent. Mentally, the changes are harder to trace. Estrogen had been shown to be a depressant that affected learning and other mental functions in some patients, but Alan kept working, switching his focus from computer programming to morphogenesis.

22 Sources “Limitations and Complications of Organotherapy in Male Homosexuality” The Journal of Clinical ​ ​ ​ Endocrinology “Treatments of homosexuality in Britain since the 1950s—an oral history: the experience of ​ patients” NIH ​ Conversion Therapy Like medical attempts to change sexuality, psychological regimens like “conversion” therapy find their origins in the Victorian era. As psychiatry and psychology developed, homosexuality was pathologized and efforts to eliminate it in individuals were introduced. Electroshock, rectal massage, and bladder washes with silver nitrate were among the physical treatments used before talk therapy pervaded.

In the 1950s, a wave of supposed cures for homosexuality through behavioral therapies moved through, then promptly out of psychological and psychiatric best practices. Homosexuality was removed from the list of disorders in the third version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) in 1974, but organizations claiming to “cure” it have persisted, mainly among Christian organizations. As of January 2018, 16 states have restricted or banned conversion therapy, but those laws often do not apply to religious or spiritual advisors.

Sources “UnErased: The History of Conversion Therapy in America” Podcast Series - Presented here on ​ ​ the website for Garrad Conley, author of Boy Erased and conversion therapy survivor. ​ ​ “Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality” by Jack Drescher ​ ​ “The Lies and Dangers of Efforts to Change Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity” HRC ​ ​ Website “Gay Conversion Therapy’s Disturbing 19th Century Origins” History Channel ​ ​ “Conversion Therapy and LGBT Youth” The Williams Institute, UCLA Law ​ ​ BONUS: “Boys Beware” 1955 “educational” Short Film warning about the dangers of “sick” ​ ​ homosexual men preying on unwitting teenage boys.

OTHER YouTube Video Playlist - anything and everything that might be in the packet! ​

Thank you, and enjoy the show!

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