In Jim Holt's Code-Breaker he talks of a research scientist named Alan Turing. Turing was murdered not just because he made discoveries but because he was interested in men. Even in the 1954 people seemed to be uneasy about people who were different or who were interested in the same sex.
Holt's purpose of the essay is to inform people that no matter how smart or inventive you are, you will still be judged not only by what you do but because of who you are and what your interests are, be them personal or work related.
Turing was the creator of the computer he figured out while tinkering that he was able to build a switchboard that would send messages to a network. However, it was John von Neumann "who would later be credited with innovations in computer architecture that Turing himself had pioneered" (Holt 341).
Who could believe that Turing a genius of his time would commit suicide? After he was convicted of being homosexual and subject to injections of male horomones to turn into a heterosexual, his life started "a slow, sad decent into grief and madness" (Holt 345), but I don't believe that it would make him want to take his own life and Leavitt didn't believe that either. Why would a man who "solved the most important logic problem of his time, saved countless lives by defeating a Nazi code, conceived the computer, and rethought how mind arises from matter" (Holt 346) could kill himself?
Why could someone want to kill Turing? Could it have been because he was gay? What if he kept his personal life a secret, would he have lived a full life?
Great blog, strong points topped off with a great question at the end. It's a shame he died at only 41 as he was clearly brilliant and could have provided further breakthroughs in science and math. It's interesting that both suicide and murder theories work in his death. He could have committed suicide over the grief of how he had been treated, or murdered because despite his breakthroughs his homosexuality was an embarrassment to his countrymen.
ReplyDeleteSuppressing his sexually was limiting his growth - he quest for knowledge and solve problems was insatiable - but as an individual, a man, he was stifled. Perhaps it was a secret too great to keep and a burden too heavy to carry. For a man of such intellect perhaps mathematically speaking death became the only solution to the problem.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone! Jeena, your posting elicited some very fine discussion about the artist or genius and the uneasy way he or she sits within society. I am reminded of the great poet, Pablo Neruda, and how he had to live in exile because of his communist affiliations. I don't know why he comes to mind when there must be many others, but persecution of the wisest people in our society seems very wrong.
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