Forgotten Turing treasure trove rescued from attic goes under the hammer Precious scientific papers once belonging to wartime codebreaking genius Alan Turing – rescued from an attic clear-out where they faced destruction – are set to fetch a fortune at auction next month. The incredible archive, tipped to rake in tens of thousands, includes a rare signed copy of Turing's 1939 PhD dissertation, …
Yes it's easy to say they belong in a museum or academic collection somewhere but what is their real value? By the sounds of it the papers from Turing themselves are all published works, the letter from his mum, well how much value it is it really for the historical record? It's akin to having an original Magna Carta or something like that, it's incredibly valuable, but as an artifact rather than for what it says, since that is common knowledge. They don't even have the value of something like a Gutenberg Bible where the actual book itself and its manufacture is of historic significance.
Yes, public (or at least academic) access was my first thought, but if these were mine and a book dealer told me I could get six figures for them I ultimately wouldn't care if they ended up in the hands of private collectors.
The Turing Archive would be the place. Whether Kings has enough spare money to bid, I don't know. It would have been nice if the Routledge family would have donated the material to the college, the Science Museum, or the British Library.
The Turing Archive ...
Indeed, I cannot think of any other place.
Whether Kings has enough ...
I don't know if Kings has enough.
But I am absolutely certain that the King does (much more than enough) and could should spare some change to get those papers into the Turing archive.
After all, his kingdom has a truly inmense debt with Alan Turing.
One that (sadly) cannot ever be repaid.
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Totally agree! And I also wonder how the 13 separate lots coming up for auction here might be related to the (unpublished) Delilah papers' saga and its recent resolution (at Kings). (same boxes as the Routledge's trove? Different boxes?)
I imagine that (as with Delilah), there's been (or will be) scrutiny into these documents to determine whether it is adviseable to have them disseminated on an open private market rather than keeping them in a more public environment (and in the UK). In my opinion, "offprints – papers produced in small quantities for circulation among fellow academics", are certainly OK to dispatch to collectors at auction (possibly keeping just one such print for a museum).
Searching the Turing Archive (linked by "Yes Me", who is „Not Me„ BTW) for "Routledge" (Norman) brings up some very nice letters between Sara Turing and him about a biography for her son, and publication of his yet unpublished manuscripts (she was 86 in the last letter, dated 1968!). But searching for "Forster" yields no result ... such postal correspondence (handwritten cursive?) could be a valuable addition to Kings' collection, particularly since, in Turing's 1936 words (TFA link: "On Computable Numbers"):
"By Lemmas 1 and 2, this implies that there is a process for determining whether ℳ ever prints 0, and this is impossible, by §8. Hence the Entscheidungsproblem cannot be solved"
which (printing problem) is a component of the Entscheidungsproblem, directly related to the halting problem, where "The Machine Stops" literally, from a literary standpoint (Forster, 1909). I'm quite intrigued by what could be in those Forster-Turing letters ... (or possibly equally interesting Forster-Routledge letters, if that's what these actually are).
It's not 100% clear from this but AFAICS the Forster letters are to ROutledge: "The sale will additionally include a collection of signed letters from E. M. Forster – another of Norman’s close friends – as well as Norman’s unpublished memoirs, in which he talks about Turing and Forster."
https://rarebookauctions.co.uk/attic-discovery-turns-out-to-be-1930s-origins-of-computer-science-by-alan-turing-expected-to-fetch-thousands-after-almost-being-shredded/
The sale catalogue would be more informative but doesn't appear to be online yet.
Can we please stop saying suicide? There’s no evidence he committed suicide, and that conclusion was thrown out at a later inquest. It’s just as likely it was an accident but more likely he was murdered by the government due to being gay and a “threat to national security”.
It’s an insult to his memory to continue the suicide story at every opportunity.
I disagree. While it’s nice to remember Turing for his work, it’s also important to remember what was done to him, especially at a time when similar things are happening again. Chemical castration does not work, yet it’s being called for again. Persecution of trans people is on the rise. It’s not OK to forget the parts of the past we’re uncomfortable with, as some A-hole will come and do them again.
Part of the problem is how society as a whole, for whatever reason, has a marked tendency to pussyfoot around things like these.
eg: state sponsored genocide / mass murder = ethnic cleansing.
... as some A-hole self-righteous asshole will come and do them again.
There you go.
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That's the OTHER reason I have a 50 pound Turing note framed on my wall (along with a 2000 Lira Marconi and a 100 [whatever] Tesla from Serbia). People are people, and those who might live a life differently from yourself may have something very important to contribute. So, be excellent to each other! (and that means calling out those who denigrate others because they object to who they are)
"He was driven to it by the authorities, and that's equivalent to murder in my book"
And that's why we should stop with phrases like "committing suicide", which go back to uncaring times when suicide was a punishable offence (as recent as the 1960s in the UK). Nice to see the Reg saying "died by suicide" instead.
People so desperate that they try to take their own lives are victims, not offenders. Turing was a victim.
No, it is still the outcome of the one and only inquest into the case and pretending otherwise is whitewashing. It's true the evidence used would probably not be acceptable to modern standards but those are the facts of case.
There is always a tendency to lionise great figures in a field in a hagiographic manner, especially if they have interesting personal lives. Stephen Hawking or to a lesser extent Sophie Wilson would be other examples. Personally I find them more inspirational more interesting as three dimensl real people.
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