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Part 1 — The Origins of Alan Turing |
| Alan Mathison Turing was born on 23 June 1912, the
second and last child (after his brother John) of Julius Mathison
and Ethel Sara Turing. The unusual name of Turing placed him in a
distinctive family tree of English gentry, far from rich but
determinedly upper-middle-class in the peculiar sense of the English
class system. His father Julius had entered the Indian Civil
Service, serving in the Madras Presidency, and had there met and
married Ethel Sara Stoney. She was the daughter of the chief
engineer of the Madras railways, who came from an Anglo-Irish family
of somewhat similar social status. Although conceived in British
India, most likely in the town of Chatrapur, Alan Turing was born in
a nursing home in Paddington, London. |
Alan Turing's father
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| In four inadequate words Alan Turing
appears now as the founder of computer science, the originator of
the dominant technology of the late twentieth century, but these
words were not spoken in his own lifetime, and he may yet be seen in
a different light in the future. They are also words very remote
from the circumstances of his birth and infancy.
The name of Turing was best known for the work of Julius' brother
H. D. Turing on fly fishing, and had no connection with the
scientific or academic worlds. The name of Stoney however was
notable for a remote relative, the Irish physicist George Johnstone
Stoney (1826-1911), today best known for his identification of the
natural units of physical quantities. Possibly the engineering base
of his mother's family, with its respect for applied science, had
some influence, but if so it was subordinated to the demands of
class, church and Empire. Certainly the elder brother John F.
Turing, who became a London solicitor, showed no sign of it. Alan
Turing's story was not one of family or tradition but of an isolated
and autonomous mind.
Alan Turing shared with his brother a childhood rigidly
determined by the demands of class and the exile in India of his
parents. Until his father's retirement from India in 1926, Alan
Turing and his elder brother John were fostered in various English
homes where nothing encouraged expression, originality, or
discovery. Science for him was an extra-curricular passion, first
shown in primitive chemistry experiments. But he was given, and
read, later commenting on its seminal influence, a popular book
called Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know.
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Alan Turing with his mother |
His boyhood scientific interests were a trial to
his mother whose perpetual terror was that he would not be
acceptable to the English Public School. At twelve he expressed his
conscious fascination with using 'the thing that is commonest in
nature and with the least waste of energy,' presentiment of a life
seeking freshly minted answers to fundamental questions. Despite
this, he was successfully entered for Sherborne School. The
headmaster soon reported: "If he is to be solely a Scientific
Specialist, he is wasting his time at a Public School." The
assessment of his establishment was almost correct. |
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© Andrew Hodges
1995 |
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