Turing: a bit off the beaten path

Abstract

M athematician, logician, World War II codebreaker , father of modern computer science, one of Tlme magazine 's Top 20 scientists and thinkers of the twentieth century. Most readers of the IHtelligencerwill probably already have at least some degree of familiarity with Alan Turing and his life story. Turing died in 1954, just a few weeks shy of his 42nd birthday, of what a coroner 's inquest concluded was a self-administered dose of potassium cyanide. Andrew Hodges explores the frustratingly ambiguous circumstances surrounding Turing's death in his excellent 1983 b iography of Turing ([HI: see also [Hi, p. 25]). (A partly eaten apple found on the table beside Turing's bed has general ly been assumed to have had something to do with matters.) The Postscript on page 529 of Hodges ' s book concludes with a rather forlorn-sounding, "There is no memorial." A couple of years ago, [ was pleasantly surprised to learn that this last assertion is no longer correct. Since June 2001, a poignant, life-like, life-size sculpture of Turing has resided in a small public park in central Manchester, Engkmd, located just a few minutes' walk flom the University of Manchester's Sackville Street campus. If my survey of about twenty colleagues and collaborators provides any indication, this remarkable grass-roots memorial to Turing could benefit from a bit more publicity within the mathematical community. Strangely enough, i myself only learned of the sculpture when, in a Minneapolis coffee shop, I happened to pick up a copy of one of our smallest alternative newspapers and wits startled to encounter a picture of it prominent ly featured in one of the articles. (I seem to have somehow missed any news of the thing in the "more standard" media 1 norreally scan.) In June 2004, I had the oppor tuni ty to make a short mathematical visit to Manchester as part of my three-week stay at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge (and their "travelling lecturer" program). I had never been to Manchester before and thought it wou ld be interesting to give a lecture there and to take at least a brief look around. (It was in looking around, in fact, that the idea of possibly preparing a tourist section essay along the present lines first hit me.) The program at the Newton Institute that I was participating in had as its focus recent connections between random matrix theory and zeta functions. Perspective-wise, I think it's fair to say that people come to Turing along a variety of avenues, some more common than others. With me, the desire to "pay Mr. Turing a visit"