A chapter from the book "The Man Who Knew Too Much" following last night's massacre at a gathering of proud teenagers in Tel Aviv

Alan Turing, a British mathematician and pioneer of computer science, was the mathematician who broke the German code in World War II, but it did not help him face a government that became hostile after discovering his sexual orientation. The chapter from the book published by Aryeh Nir, deals with the circumstances of his suicide following the chemical treatment he went through to 'cure' him. Courtesy of the publisher

The Man Who Knew Too Much by David Levitt. From English: Yael Sela-Shapiro, Aryeh Nir Publishing. 271 pages. Price: 84 NIS

From the cover:

Alan Turing is considered the father of the computer and artificial intelligence. It had a rare combination of a theoretician mathematician and a man of action, who was personally involved in the construction of the calculating machines he designed. The breakthrough to building an actual calculating machine was accomplished when Turing, along with a team of scientists and thinkers, built facilities designed to crack the Nazis' Enigma code and thereby advance the victory of the Allies in World War II. Already in his doctoral thesis, in 1936, Turing faced one of the greatest mathematical challenges of the time - the decisiveness problem", and proposed, theoretically, the construction of a programmable calculating machine.

After the war, Turing became the flagship of artificial intelligence and formulated the famous Turing Test, which challenged our conceptions of human consciousness. However, the scientist who was blessed with one of the sharpest minds, is also considered a curious person, with an agitated soul. His approach regarding the possible level of intelligence of a machine that can teach itself, initiate and draw conclusions and the very possibility that the computer will surpass man and take over the world, aroused much opposition. Also the fact of his being a homosexual, which he treated with surprising frankness for his time, created opponents and enemies for him. He was arrested for violating anti-homosexual laws and sentenced to "treatment" which was mainly chemical castration. Turing committed suicide, apparently by biting an apple dipped in cyanide.

Explanation of the knowledge site system

After last night's event, we asked to respond, as a website that constantly advocates a liberal approach, which unfortunately is a rare commodity. My friend Michael Rothschild came up with the idea of ​​bringing up Turing's story, in particular following the biography that came out about him and was translated into Hebrew. We therefore turned to the spokeswoman for Aryeh Nir Publishing, Shirley Itzhaki, and asked for the relevant chapter dealing with the death of Turing, one of the greatest mathematicians and the foundational theorists of the field of computer science, who stood well among the minds against the Nazis and succeeded in deciphering their code, something that greatly aided the Allies in the struggle that ultimately led to victory . However, he was unable to stand up to the ignorance of British society and the legal system that forced chemical castration on him.

We take advantage of the situation to participate in the grief of the community and the families of the murdered and wish a full recovery to the injured.

Regardless, we also share in the grief of the Nir family for the sudden death of Aryeh about two weeks ago from cardiac arrest, Nir left us a huge legacy in the field of popular science books and we hope it will continue.

Avi Blizovsky

Here is the episode before you:

Chapter from the book "The Man Who Knew Too Much - Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer"
By David Levitt
From English: Yael Sela-Shapiro
Published by Aryeh Nir

In other words, he remained the same Turing - except that Turing had a fixed address and had friends. Friends included his neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Roy Webb (Turing was also very fond of their young son Rob); Max Newman and his wife the writer Lynn Irwin; Robin Gandy; and Norman Routledge, also a graduate of King's College, who was perhaps the most important of Turing's friends because he was gay and Turing's confidant in matters that Turing did not want to discuss with other people. It cannot be said that his erotic life flourished, but it seems that at least they became less oppressive than they were in earlier periods. The move to Manchester did cloud his relationship with Neville Johnson a bit, but he often traveled to Europe - once to Norway and several times to France. The laws in France did not consider sex between men a criminal act, and thanks to them the English who were "abroad" enjoyed a much needed respite from the aura of worry and guilt that still clings to homosexual sex in Britain. The continent gave Turing the opportunity to enjoy erotic love affairs without fearing their consequences, and the search for a few days of freedom every now and then was a typical act of his contemporaries.

He did not limit his quests to Europe only. Even in Manchester, Turing occasionally enjoyed an adventure or a random relationship. In January 1952, around the time the BBC broadcast his confrontation with Jefferson, such a relationship began when Turing met a nineteen-year-old boy named Arnold Murray near the Regal Cinema. Like most working-class boys at the time, Arnold suffered from both malnutrition and lack of pocket; Quite a few boys in his situation used to earn a little pocket money by hiding behind the arches of the railway station in the company of an older man. However, it seems that the two men aspired to a more meaningful relationship. Turing therefore invited Arnold to have lunch with him, and then invited him to stay at his house for the weekend. Arnold accepted the invitation but did not come to the house. The following Monday they met again in Manchester, at which point Turing suggested that this time Arnold should come to him without delay. Arnold agreed. He visited Turing again that month, had dinner with him and (apparently) slept with him. After that, Turing sent him a penknife.

The money thing caused some embarrassment. Arnold did not want Turing to treat him like a male prostitute, so he resisted Turing's offer to give him cash. But later Turing discovered that his wallet lacked money. Arnold denied anything to do with the missing money, but asked for a three pound loan to pay off a debt. A few days later he asked for seven more pounds - again this time to pay off a debt. A brief argument broke out between the two as Turing asked to whom Arnold owed the money, but in the end he wrote a check in Arnold's name.

A few days later, Turing's house was broken into. The thief or thieves took fifty pounds worth of property from the house: clothes, fish knives, a razor and a compass, and other things. He called the police and two officers came to collect fingerprints at the house. Turing suspected that Arnold was involved in the burglary and therefore consulted his neighbor's lawyer; The lawyer advised Turing to write Arnold a letter with a reminder about the money that disappeared from the wallet, a reminder about the money he still owes Turing and a recommendation that they not meet again. In response to the letter, Arnold appeared angrily at Turing's house and threatened to "make a lot of trouble". The scene brought to mind the confrontation between Maurice and Alec in the British Museum, where the poor game warden says to the bourgeois broker, "Mr. Hull, I understand very well that you will not like it if a few things are discovered, I think so." In response, Morris lashes out at him: "In the name of God, if you had whistled on me... I would have dismantled you. It would have cost me hundreds, but I have enough, and the police always help people like me and not like you." But if Turing assumed that it was obvious that the police would help people like him and not like Arnold, then he made a bitter mistake.

The threat of extortion in Morris is the prelude to reconciliation: Alec withdraws from his intention and the lovers retire to their hotel. A similar thing happened near Manchester. Arnold retracted his threat and admitted that he had bragged about his connections with Turing to a young man named Harry, and that Harry had offered to rob Turing's house in response to the discovery. Arnold said he refused to take part in the program; However, it is possible that Harry decided to carry out the robbery alone. The confession straightened the generations as in Morris, and its results were Eden and intercourse. Arnold promised to return the stolen objects - and a few days later he did inform Turing that he had some success in locating the stolen objects. However, it was already too late, as the police returned to Turing, not to inform him of the progress of the investigation but to inform him that they "know everything there is to know" about his affair with Arnold. They did two and two more, and now, instead of arresting the thief, they arrested his victim. The charge was grossly indecent behavior with another man: the same crime for which Oscar Wilde had been convicted and for which he had been banned more than fifty years before.

B.
The few years that Turing had left after his arrest were characterized by a slow and sad descent into grief and madness. He was tried for moral offenses and instead of a prison sentence he was "sentenced" to undergo a series of estrogen treatments designed to "cure" him of his homosexuality. The estrogen injections affected him like chemical castration, and their worst effect was humiliating side effects. The slim-figured sprinter got fat and grew breasts. Despite all the difficulties he continued to work gritting his teeth and with the resilience he must have acquired at Bletchley. For example, when Norman Routledge wrote him a letter in February about intelligence jobs, Turing replied, "I don't believe I really know about such jobs, except for the job I had during the war, and that job didn't involve travel, of course. I think they are looking for cadets... but my current situation does not allow me to concentrate well, and the reasons are explained in the next paragraph."

With what restraint Turing answered Routledge's question, before discovering the bad news!

I got into the kind of trouble I always thought I might get into, though I usually [illegible] it with a 1 in 10 chance. I will soon plead guilty to committing sexual offenses with a young man. The story of the revelation of the events is long and fascinating, and one day I will have to make it a short story, but I don't have time to tell you now. There is no doubt that following the affair I became a different person, although I still haven't found out which person exactly.

And at the end of the letter Turing wrote,
I'm glad you enjoyed the broadcast. But C was quite disappointing. I am afraid that there will be those who will use the following key in the future:
Turing believes that machines can think
Turing lays men down
Therefore machines cannot think

and signed, "Yours in distress, Alan."

Now there was no doubt that he would never work on government cryptanalysis projects again, even though Hugh Alexander had approached him shortly before and offered him just such a job. The reason is that because of his condition, Turing is considered too high a security risk. Due to the defection of Guy Burgess in 1951, the myth of the homosexual traitor gained momentum, both in the mass media and in government offices. Forrester only made the situation worse when he wrote in his article "What I Believe" that if he is forced to choose between betraying his friend and betraying his country, he hopes that he will be able to find the courage to betray his country. If the police followed Turing and even tried to prevent him from leaving England, they did not do so just to harass him, but out of fear that he would decide to betray his homeland and hand over the secret information known to him to an enemy agent posing as a friend. They didn't care at all that Turing was apolitical to the core. For them, he barely existed, and after they castrated him chemically, they began to castrate him morally by robbing him not only of his freedom of movement, but also of his freedom of emotion. Indeed, it is possible that because he felt so castrated he chose to draft his second letter to Norman Routledge - a letter written a year later - in a consciously feminine tone that was largely absent from his previous letters:
At our next meeting I have a lovely story to tell you about my adventurous life. I had another round with the Gendarmes, and the winner of round #2 is definitely Turing. Half of the C police in England (according to one of the reports) went out to look for a guy who is apparently one of my friends... Our entire conduct lacked perfect modesty and morality. But the poor baboons didn't know that. A very light kiss under a foreign flag, under the influence of drink, was the only incident that occurred... the poor guy was treated rather appallingly in my opinion. I'll tell you all when we meet at Teddington in March. After all, a suspended sentence hangs over my head, so my warning was flawless, as required. If I had gone that far and parked my bike on the wrong side of the road I would have been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Of course, the police will continue to stick their nose in, so Tomati must continue to be vigilant.

At the end of his letter, Turing told his friend that he might "try to get a job in France." He also reveals to him that he has started going to psychological therapy. He signed the letter, "Kisses, Alan."

The therapist was Dr. Frank M. Greenbaum. He may be the man who convinced Turing to write - or at least start writing - the short story he wrote to Norman Routledge about. Turing is played in the story by a character named Alec Price (it is possible that the use of the last name of the physicist Maurice Price was accidental), a scientist who resembled Turing in every sense except in his field of occupation, which was not a computer high school but rather "interstellar travel". And as Turing was the father of the Turing machine, Alec was the architect of an invention called Price's buoy - a kind of satellite or spaceship.

Every time they said the float's name, Alec beamed with pride. The doubling of the meaning, which is almost self-evident, also quite pleased him. He had always liked to flaunt his homosexuality, and in the right company Alec would pretend that the letter U didn't appear in the word. It had been quite a while since he had "been" with anyone, and in fact hadn't since meeting that soldier in Paris at the end of the summer. Since he had finished his article he thought he had honestly earned another jolly man, and knew where he could find a man who might suit him.

Alec, like Turing, used to talk "wildly with journalists or on the broadcasts of the third radio station." Like Turing, he was rather unkempt, wearing "an old sports jacket and unironed wool trousers." Echoes of Dr. Greenbaum's voice serve as the background for the following paragraph, which contains an analysis of his clothing tendencies:
"He didn't like wearing a suit and instead preferred the 'undergraduate uniform', which matched his mental age and reinforced the encouraging belief that he was still an attractive young man. This developmental delay is also evident in his work. All the men whom Alec did not see as candidates for sexual relations were fellow scholars, to whom Alec felt he had to actively demonstrate his intellectual skills."

At the beginning of the story, Alec goes shopping for Christmas. He is apparently looking for the "cheerful man" who he feels has "earned honestly" - and at this point the point of view of the story suddenly changes and becomes the point of view of "Ron Miller", Arnold's replacement. Ron, it turns out to us, "had been unemployed for two months, and he had no money left. He was supposed to get a few tenths for the little job Ernie asked him to help with. All he needed to do was talk to the night watchman, to distract himself while the others did the work. But it wasn't safe." Ron was also "very hungry and quite suffering from the December cold." And it turns out that he does not refuse to consider an exchange transaction of sex for cash:
"If he lets someone take him under the arches for ten minutes, he can get four pounds. The men seemed less enthusiastic, not like they did a year ago, before [Ron's?] accident. Of course it was less good than sleeping with a girl, it wasn't similar at all, but if the guy wasn't too old then it was actually pleasant. Ernie would tell how his boys would make love to him as if he were the girl, and what things they would say! But they were tough. Ernie could get them as easily as [illegible] because of his gay [illegible] and his hippie doll face. And it sounds like that poor little pig liked it quite a bit. Heard [inaudible] bragging that he can't do anything with a girl when she pays him!”

Ron therefore considers himself seemingly of a different status than Ernie, that "wretched little pig", just as Arnold considers himself to be of a different status from friends such as the "little pig" Harry for example. Nevertheless, he looks for an opportunity and notices that Alec is watching him:
"The guy who was hanging around there took a look at him... here he is again. This time Ron looked back, and Alec answered him and did another quick lap around the bed. Now it was clear exactly what he wanted. But it seems he doesn't have enough eggs. Maybe you should encourage him a little next time he passes. And here he comes. Ron looked Alec in the eyes and gave him a half smile. But that was enough. Alec approached the park bench; Ron made room for him and he sat down. He wasn't wearing who-knows-what. What a coat! Why doesn't he say anything? Could he be wrong? No, he had this kind of evasive look... if he's not careful, nothing will come of it."

Ron asks if Alec has a cigarette. And Alec happens to have a cigarette - although this requires a bit of explaining.
"He didn't smoke, because he didn't have enough control when he smoked, and in any case he felt bad after he smoked. But he knew that for these "clicks", you need some cigarettes.
"You're busy now?" Alec asked him suddenly. It was a standard opening sentence. Although a bit blunt, he couldn't think of a better sentence than him; And in any case, bluntness is intended to prevent misunderstandings. This type is fit for purpose. Not really beautiful, but has its own charm. Beggars cannot afford to be picky. He shook his head in the negative. "Come have lunch with me."

Beggars cannot afford to be picky. This moment is so sad because the intensity of the need for a Forrester connection destroys standards, status, memory (of the seemingly ideal Morcom) and even self-esteem. And not only from Alec's point of view - but also (albeit to a lesser extent) from Ron's point of view:
"Okay, why not," said Ron. He didn't like irrelevant talk. In the end we arrive at the same place. A bed is a bed and it doesn't matter how you got into it. Alec had a different opinion and he remained silent for several minutes as they strode towards the Grankoff restaurant [?]. At least he managed to get to the meal. It was also clear to Ron. He was sure of the meal. He wasn't sure if he would have to do anything. Maybe he can get something without doing anything.

However, at the restaurant, Ron is shocked that "a doorman opens the door for you and lets you in first as if you were a girl," and out of shock barely notices Alec. Instead, it is "entirely focused on the restaurant and its ornate decorations." And this makes Alec happy: "He was usually embarrassed in restaurants, either because he was alone or because he didn't do the right thing. Ron doesn't….”
And this is where the story ends. We will never know what happened to Ron and Alec. They stand forever on the brink of possibility - perhaps the possibility of happiness - and have escaped the shadow that cast over their creator and destroyed his life.

third.
Mrs. Clayton, Alan Turing's housekeeper, found his body in his bed on the morning of June 8, 1954. Next to him was an apple with several bites missing.
"By now you must have heard of Mr. Allen's death," she wrote to his mother.
It was a terrible shock. I just didn't know what to do. And so I rushed to Mrs. Gibson's house and she called the police and they said not to touch anything and not do anything. And I just didn't remember your address I was on vacation at the weekend and I went up at night as usual to take his meal. I saw that there was a light in his bedroom and the living room curtains were not closed, a bottle of milk on the stairs and a newspaper stuck in the door. So I thought he left the house early and forgot to turn off the light in the room. So I went up and knocked on the bedroom door. He didn't answer so I went inside. I found him in bed, he must have died in the night. The police came again tonight to take a statement from me.

then added,
“Mr and Mrs Gibson saw Alan walking on Monday evening. He seemed fine then. Last weekend he hosted V. [so in the original] Gandhi here and it seems they had a really nice time. And Mr. and Mrs. Webb came to dinner on Tuesday and Mrs. Webb came to afternoon tea on Wednesday: that day she moved.”

The possibility that Turing committed suicide was so improbable to Mrs. Clayton that she produced evidence against it (though not so improbable that she did not think it worth mentioning). Nevertheless, the inquest held on June 10 determined that Turing had taken his own life. It appears that the apple was dipped in a cyanide solution.

Many of Turing's friends shared the connection theory developed by his mother in the years after his death, and helped her spread the myth that Turing did not commit suicide, but died as a result of a mistake in a scientific experiment. When they concocted this theory, they pointed out that Turing kept a stockpile of chemical materials (including potassium cyanide) as well as various scientific equipment in his home. Dr. Greenbaum, the psychoanalyst, wrote for example to Mrs. Turing,

There is no doubt in my heart that Alan died accidentally. You describe so vividly the way Alan experimented that I can see in my mind's eye how he fiddles with his materials. When he conducted experiments he behaved like a child and did not always face the [illegible] inscriptions but would also test the material with his fingers... Suicide was never further away from him than it was at the time of his death.

Turing's neighbor wrote in the same spirit to Mrs. Turing, saying that
"It is hard to believe that there is a connection between the coroner's determination and Alan's behavior before we left Park Villa on June 3. He invited us to have dinner with him on the 1st of June and we spent a most delightful evening with him. In the following two days I saw him several times and the day we passed he invited me to a cup of tea. He made toast and we ate it at the kitchen table. It was a most merry meal, Mrs. Clayton came back and had a cup of tea with us. Alan was full of plans to come visit us in Stiel on his way back from university in the evenings, and I find it hard to believe that he was thinking in those moments about the act he was going to do. It must have popped up as a sudden thought."

Hugh Alexander, who was still mostly engrossed in cryptanalysis, wrote to Mrs. Turing:

Let me confirm your words that recently Alan was happy and good-natured; About a month before his death, I received a letter from him in which he told me that he was undergoing treatment, and that he felt that the treatment was beneficial to him and that he felt better than he felt [censored]. Because of his letter I was especially shocked when I read what happened and I am very happy to hear that it may have been an accident.

Mrs. Turing was still collecting evidence to support her version even in 1960. The last letter is a letter from W. T. Jones, who is professor of philosophy at Pomona College in California:

If I may say, I believe that all the evidence - both positive and negative - supports your view of the circumstances of his death. "Negative" evidence means that I don't think Allen was the type to end his life. "Positive" evidence means that he was indeed the type to act carelessly (or more precisely, inattentively) in dangerous aspects of the experiments he conducted.

But there is a third possibility, and it is interesting that none of Turing's friends ever thought of it or at least did not put it in writing. That third possibility (for which there is no evidence, admittedly, at least not today) is that the suicide was staged; That the man in the white suit became a man who knew too much - like the hero of Alfred Hitchcock's 1934 film.

If Turing did kill himself, he seems to have thought he was going somewhere. Remember that Alec Price, the hero of the nameless story, is an authority on Star Trek. In March 1954, a few months before his death, Turing sent Robin Gandhi a series of four mysterious postcards. The first one was lost. The other three are added to a list of numbered proverbs bearing the collective title Messages from the Invisible World:
III. The universe is the inner part of the light cone of creation
IV. Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition. (sgd) Arthur Stanley
V. Miraculous hyperboloids of light
through space and time to unfold
We are building waves that can
To embody the wonders of God's pantomime.
VI. Particles are springs.
VII. Charge = angle e/π of type 2π rotation.
VII. The prohibition principle is flouted only to benefit the electrons themselves, because if they are allowed to form bonds too freely, this may corrupt them (until they become dragons or demons)

Other mathematicians who were as great as Turing ended their lives in madness: this happened to both Cantor and Gedel. It is possible that Turing also developed hallucinations towards the end of his life, and imagined that he was rolling in space inside "wonderful hyperboloids of light" also called Price's buoy. Gandhi, on the other hand, believes that the pretensions in the postcards were "part of a new quantum mechanics... which should not be taken too seriously (which is almost entirely 'for entertainment purposes only'), although there is no doubt that something may grow out of it that can be taken seriously." Or maybe the new quantum mechanics was about apples, light cones and spaceships. In his book Mathematician's Apology, Hardy wrote: "Let no mathematician allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other scientific art, is intended only for the young." But Gandhi claims that Turing did not lose his powers; Indeed, in the months before his death, Turing came up with an upper limit for the Scios number, which was even lower than the one that Scios himself had set. Had he chosen to publish his discovery, it would have been considered a significant achievement. But he decided not to publish it. He said he didn't want to embarrass Scios.

If the idea of ​​suicide even occurred to him, it must have occurred suddenly. The method, however, had been brewing in his mind for years. For example, his friend James Atkins told Andrew Hodges that Turing once wrote him a letter from Princeton describing a method of committing suicide "using an apple and an electric wire." He also told his friend that he used to eat an apple every night before he went to sleep. And of course many weeks after seeing the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Cambridge, he continued to hum as he walked the halls of King's College

The apple in the pharmacy will be dipped,
And the old death in him will permeate

The apple has not ceased to fascinate us to this very day. Mounds of interpretation are based on its metaphorical implications. (The apple of death, the apple of knowledge - but too much knowledge?) There is a widespread rumor on the Internet that the apple that is the trademark of Apple computers is actually a tribute to Turing. The company denies any connection to this; On the contrary, she claims, her apple suggests Newton. If so, why did he bite?
It is possible that we percolate because Turing chose to end his life in a rather gay way - equivalent to his departure from the world, which he behaved in a disappointing way, garnet glamorous, colorful, gothic and strange like a Disney movie. But in all the pages I read about Turing - and we are talking about dozens of pages - no one mentioned the message that seemed to me to be self-evident. In the story, Snow White does not die from biting into the apple; She falls asleep and wakes up only when the prince wakes her up with a kiss.

Quotes about the book

• David Levitt is a writer and creative writing instructor at the University of Florida. With the sharpness and elegance of scientific writing, David Levitt explains Turing's scientific work and its consequences, and with the sensitivity of literary writing, he unfolds his extraordinary life story. The Man Who Knew Too Much is a fascinating science-biography.
• "The Man Who Knew Too Much - a biography that excels in extraordinary elegance and eloquence, unfolding the life story of one of the most fascinating figures in twentieth-century thought." – David Berlinski, author of A Tour of Calculus and The Advent of the Algorithm
• "David Levitt, with his wonderful writing talent, has written a simple, interesting and incredibly readable book about a complex, complicated and extremely fascinating character." Publishers Weekly.
• "A wonderful combination of a stormy and touching personal life story and the work of a great scientist, whose invention - a thinking machine - completely changed the face of the world." New York Times