Alan Turing

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alan Turing (1912-1954) whose 1936 paper On Computable Numbers effectively founded computer science. Immediately recognised by his peers, his wider reputation has grown as our reliance on computers has grown. He was a leading figure at Bletchley Park in the Second World War, using his ideas for cracking enemy codes, work said to have shortened the war by two years and saved millions of lives. That vital work was still secret when Turing was convicted in 1952 for having a sexual relationship with another man for which he was given oestrogen for a year, or chemically castrated. Turing was to kill himself two years later. The immensity of his contribution to computing was recognised in the 1960s by the creation of the Turing Award, known as the Nobel of computer science, and he is to be the new face on the £50 note. With Leslie Ann Goldberg Professor of Computer Science and Fellow of St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford Simon Schaffer Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Darwin College And Andrew Hodges Biographer of Turing and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:04.6	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.2	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our
0:10.8	programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time. I hope you
0:15.1	enjoy the programs. Hello at the age of 24 I'm ensuring founded computer
0:20.2	science. He didn't know that nor did the wider public yet his reputation has grown as our reliance on computers has grown
0:27.6	He was also openly gay and made no secret of his sex life in a world where that was a crime. His real secret was his vital
0:36.1	contribution to the Bletchley Park codecrackers who it said shortened World War II by two years
0:41.8	and saved millions of lives.
0:44.0	The normative Turing contribution to society stands in shameful contrast to the injustice
0:49.3	he and many other gay men faced.
0:51.6	He was sentenced to be chemically frustrated and age 41 he killed himself.
0:57.0	Next year he's to be the face on the new 50 pound note.
1:00.2	We need to discuss our insuring's ideas in life are Leslie Ann Goldberg,
1:04.0	Professor of Computer Science and Fellow of St Edmonds Hall University of Oxford.
1:08.0	Simon Schaffer, Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Darwin College,
1:14.6	and Andrew Hodges, biographer of Turing, an emeritus fellow at Wharton College, Oxford.
1:19.8	Each of them in their Erie, somewhere in the UK. First of all Andrew Hodges. Can you tell us
1:26.0	about Turing's early life and his relationship with his family?
1:30.0	Well, Alan Turing's early life was this, it's the story of the British Empire around the First World War.
1:35.4	He was born in London in 1912, but his parents are mostly away governing India until he was 14 or so.
1:42.4	And there was a relentless unforgiving program of fostering
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