Turing broke the Enigma Machine and was himself an enigma

Alan Turing.

This was the year of Alan Turing.

“Ho hum, so what?” I hear you ask.

Well, despite your lack of curiosity, this is a moment in history that warrants interest as Turing’s skills shortened World War Two saving hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of lives and today the outcome of his efforts is implicated in most of what we do.

Turing was born a century ago last June and along with breaking the German Enigma Code of the Second World War he is credited with being the founder of computer science.

Many of the thoughts that once flooded through Turing’s mind are now embedded in your computer or the intricate workings of your smart phone.

Much of the credit for the life we enjoy is attributable to Turing for as he helped cut short a damnably destructive war and was instrumental in developing the God-like technologies on which the modern world depends.

Turing was a different and sometimes difficult man who epitomized the popular idea of “nerd” and being something of a loner enjoyed the solitary world of marathon running and it was that predilection that resulted in him working pretty much alone on the German cryptography used in the Enigma machine that transmitted messages to and from that country’s World War Two submarines.

That “loner” is credited with breaking the code used on those German machines changing the fortunes of the allies in the Second World War.

Turing, iconoclastic in behaviour and attitude, paid dearly for his pragmatic approach to life that manifested itself in a logic and honesty that, at the time, exceeded the intellectual capacity of society.

Homosexuality was a crime in the early decades of last century and Turing, who had never hidden his preferences found himself, because of those desires, entangled in a potential blackmail situation, and naively went to the police only to be subsequently charged for his behaviour.

Turing, who had been a “behind the scenes” hero of Great Britain during the war was found guilty for his sexual preferences and rather than go to goal, accepted chemical castration, but then in 1954, just before his 42^nd birthday, he died of poisoning, something many considered suicide, but believed accidental by his mother and others.

However, in 2009 following a public push, the then British PM, Gordon Brown, officially apologized on behalf of his government for the “appalling way Turing was treated”.

Listening to a recent discussion about Turing, one queried whether or not the remarkably thinker, had he lived, would have continued to add to the sum of human knowledge?

Leading the discussion, Monash University associate professor, Graham Farr, said such a question was unanswerable, but he liked to imagine Turing would have remained at the forefront of knowledge.