A ‘rare insight’ into Alan Turing’s mind: Unpublished papers sell at auction for £381,400 – revealing his attempts to develop a portable encryption system and voice scrambler

Alan Turing, British mathematician, was born on June 23, 1912 in Maida Vale, London, to father Julius, a civil servant, and mother Ethel, the daughter of a railway engineer.

His talents were recognized early at school, but he faced difficulties with his teachers when he began boarding at Sherborne School when he was 13 because he was too focused on science.

Turing continued to excel in mathematics, but his time at Sherborne was also affected by the death of his close friend Christopher Morcom from tuberculosis. Morcom has been described as Turing's “first love” and remained close to his mother after his death, writing to her on Morcom's birthday every year.

He then moved to Cambridge where he studied at King's College, graduating with a first class degree in mathematics.

During World War II, Turing played a pivotal role in cracking the Enigma codes used by the German military to encrypt their messages.

His work gave Allied commanders vital information about the movement and intentions of Hitler's forces.

Historians credit the work of Turing and his fellow code-breakers at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire with shortening the war by up to two years and saving countless lives, and he was awarded an OBE in 1946 for his services.

Turing is also widely regarded as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence due to his pioneering work in mathematics in the 1930s.

He was able to prove that a “universal computing machine” would be able to implement equations if presented as an algorithm – and published a paper on the subject in 1936 in the Proceedings of the Journal of the London Mathematical Society when he was only 23 years old. .

But he was disgraced in 1952 when he was convicted of homosexual activity, which was illegal at the time and was not decriminalized until 1967.

To avoid prison, Turing agreed to “chemical castration” – hormone treatment designed to reduce sexual desire.

In addition to the physical and emotional damage, his conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, meaning he was no longer able to work for GCHQ, the successor to the government code and Cypher School, based in Bletchley Park.

Turing was awarded an OBE in 1946 for his code-breaking work at Bletchley Park, which is credited with ending World War II two years early.

Then in 1954, at the age of 41, he died of cyanide poisoning. The investigation recorded a ruling of suicide, although his mother and others confirmed that his death was accidental.

When his body was discovered, there was a half-eaten apple next to his bed. It was never tested for the presence of cyanide but is believed to have been the source of the fatal dose.

Some of the more outlandish theories suggest that Turing was “obsessed” with the fairy tale “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and that his death was inspired by the poisoned apple in the story.

After a public outcry over his treatment and conviction, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a public apology in 2009.

He then received a royal pardon after his death in 2014, which is only the fourth pardon issued since the end of World War II.

It was requested by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling, who described Turing as a national hero who fell foul of the law because of his sexual orientation.

The online petition calling for Turing's pardon had previously garnered 37,404 signatures.

The 2017 law, which retrospectively pardons all men cautioned or convicted of homosexual acts under landmark legislation, is named in his honour.