Talk:Alan Turing

An event mentioned in this article is a May 28 selected anniversary.

Asperger syndrome

The following references identify Alan Turing as having had Asperger syndrome, or identify him as a possible case. At least two of the authors of these items are professors, and at least two of them are Asperger syndrome experts.

O’Connell H., Fitzgerald M. (2003). Did Alan Turing have Asperger’s syndrome? Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine. 20, 1, 28 – 31. http://www.ijpm.org/index.html?level=2&isid=30&var=past

James, Ioan (2005) Asperger syndrome and high achievement: some very remarkable people. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Attwood, Tony (2000) The autism epidemic – real or imagined. Autism Asperger’s Digest. November/December 2000. http://www.tonyattwood.com.au/pdfs/attwood4.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.110.18 (talk) 13:59, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Question about the statue...

I was looking at the picture, and trying to figure out if he's holding an apple in the hand resting on the bench. Can anyone confirm that this is the case? It would seem somewhat appropriate, with the sense of humor he had. Or at least, that I've read about. D1universe (talk) 08:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've been there, he is indeed holding an apple. Very appropriate, I thought. 82.31.236.174 (talk) 22:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Turing was a homosexual

Would anyone object to changing the first reference to homosexual to gay? Homosexual is a cold clinical term kind of dehumanizes him and the struggles that we gay people have gone through. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.223.15.238 (talk) 23:08, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:NPOV Netrat_msk (talk) 17:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Church of emacs has changed 'gay' back to 'homosexual'. I would support the change, as this was the term in use at the time and 'gay' had a different meaning. The argument that 'homosexual' dehumanises Turing seems to me to have no validity—historical judgements should be made with an understanding of the context of the time. TedColes (talk) 16:32, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The footnotes

are butchered in the entry, probably a function of sloppy editing. Could someone please salvage the footnotes?SLY111 (talk) 20:19, 21 March 2008 (UTC)SLY111

Posthumous recognition

Turing Lecture 2008 at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park is holding the annual Turing Lecture 2008 on Thursday, 10th July. Dr Andrew Hodges, tutor in Mathematics and Fellow of Wadham College, University of Oxford, will discuss some of the unresolved issues that have come to the forefront, as historians of science strive to understand the development of Turing’s thought.

Turing in Fiction

The entire "Turing in Fiction" section is not only full of trivia, but technically doesn't even belong in this article:

• In the 1986 play by Hugh Whitemore and the later 1996 television drama Breaking the Code Turing is portrayed by Derek Jacobi.

• Says nothing about Turing. Possible mention in associated pages, but adds nothing to this article.

• Physicist Janna Levin's novel A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines focuses on the lives of both Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel.

• Fictional novel. Perhaps a mention in the bibliography?

• In the 1989 Doctor Who serial The Curse of Fenric, the character of Dr Judson is based on Turing. Turing himself is a narrator of the Doctor Who spin-off novel The Turing Test by Paul Leonard. An Alan Turing from a parallel universe appears in the later novel The Domino Effect by David Bishop.

• Says nothing about Turing. Possible mention in associated pages, but adds nothing to this article.

• Greg Egan's novella, Oracle, is about an alternate universe version of Turing.

• Says nothing about Turing. Possible mention in associated pages, but adds nothing to this article.

• In 1987 German author and playwright Rolf Hochhuth published the novel Alan Turing after reading the biography written by Turing's mother.

• Fictional novel? Already mentioned in the Further Reading section.

• Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon features Turing as a supporting character.

• Says nothing about Turing. Possible mention in associated pages, but adds nothing to this article. Truly trivial.

• In William Gibson's novel Neuromancer, the military subdivision who control the AIs of Wintermute and Neuromancer are known as the Turing Police.

• Says nothing about Turing. Possible mention in associated pages, but adds nothing to this article. Truly trivial.

• In Robert Harris's thriller Enigma, Turing and his work are part of the background involving WWII espionage at Bletchley Park.

• Says nothing about Turing. Possible mention in associated pages, but adds nothing to this article.

• In a 2006 film The Good Shepherd, Dr. Fredericks' character is inspired by Alan Turing.

• Says nothing about Turing. Possible mention in associated pages, but adds nothing to this article. Truly trivial.

• In the Young James Bond series book Double or Die Alan Turing is character who is working on improving Charles Babbage's work and at the end of the book is helping the British with a code cracking machine.

• Says nothing about Turing. Possible mention in associated pages, but adds nothing to this article.

Unless there are objections, I'm going to remove the whole section. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 21:21, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Appropriate, as far as I can judge. Glad the info is still here, though.Derekbd (talk) 12:47, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Should we request semi-protection for the article?

This page is practically a "poster child" for semi-protection -- there's a remarkably steady stream of vandalism from randomly distributed sources. Do others agree? The criteria is 5% of edits being vandalism and on this page it must be well over 50%.

Over half the traffic on my watchlist is vandalism to this article. It all gets fixed quickly, but just the sheer noise level on our watchlists is an impediment to real work, I think.

The request page is WP:RFP in case someone wants to just go ahead and make the request. The policies seem to suggest the initial request be for a limited period of time, to see if the problem goes away. I think the idea is that makes the culprits get bored and move on. But it doesn't look like a small number of people or even groups are responsible, so I suspect we'll wind up having this page permanently semi-protected.

Alternatively, we could use the vandalism as a random number generator. Its incidence seems to be a very nice white noise approximation. Turing would have liked that, I think.

--Jeffreykegler (talk) 03:56, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I would support this. TedColes (talk) 07:55, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

It may be my imagination, but vandalism seems to have slowed. The Wiki-powers-that-be apparently frown on pre-emptive requests for protection, so unless a consensus appears that is eager to make the request, I'm going to wait and see. --Jeffreykegler (talk) 04:12, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, sorry if I'm doing this wrong but it is vandalized right now. Some one replaced eating a cyanide laced apple in the Prosecution and Death section with some ridiculous stuff about a giant laser. I'd fix it myself, but I just signed up today to try to report this vandalization (I just got back from a museum about his work). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikibufo (talk • contribs) 23:15, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

religious stance

The religious stance in the infobox was recently removed with the comment "Atheism is not a religious stance." This has been discussed at WikiProject_Atheism. The consensus was that atheism is technically not a religious stance but it is still useful to have that information available. I agree and think the infobox should stay as it was. Carlsotr (talk) 18:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Photo of Turing

Does anyone know why there is no longer a photo of Turing on the main page Infobox? Was it a copyright issue? It seems a shame to have a picture of a memorial when we have real photographs of the man himself. Todd (talk) 01:49, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I was just going to say that. I'd support the proposal of changing the photo of the statue for one of Alan Turing. 190.224.84.146 (talk) 07:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC) I too would support this. It is quite strange to have an article about a person of whom many photos have been published without one of him at the top of the page. TedColes (talk) 19:37, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Weasel wording in the intro

The statement "[h]e died not long after, under what some believe were ambiguous circumstances" needs to be sourced. Reading the talk page archive, there was some discussion on the circumstances around his death, but no apparent conclusion. There must be some credible sources that at the very least question the nature of his death. I'm not familiar with the literature on Turing, so I don't want to go blindly adding sources myself. freshacconci talktalk 13:08, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Awards

When did Turing receive his OBE and FRS? They are only mentioned in the introduction and infobox, as far as I can tell. novakreo (talk) 12:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

OBE June 1946 'for his war service' according to Andrew Hodges (1985) p. 338. FRS 15 March 1951 Hodges p. 438. --TedColes (talk) 13:06, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Turing-Welshman ndash

I can see this just becoming an edit war, although I think those working on this article would still have a good natured one.

I till don't see the need for an ndash here. It's hardly the end of the world, but huge numbers of collaborations have always just been printed with normal hyphen. I don't think there's any likeihodd, ESCPECIALLY considering the title of the article, that people would think Turing-Welchman was one person. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SimonTrew (talk • contribs) 08:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah it is not the end of the world. And good to know that everyone here will have a friendly war! SimonTrew (talk) 21:04, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:MOSDASH: use an ndash. Mr Stephen (talk) 21:12, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Fair dinkum. Usually I have the opposite problem correcting into emdash or ndash, not out of them. Here I still kinda grumbly disagree but if those are the style guidelines, I can live with that. SimonTrew (talk) 22:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Picture of statue

The pic of Turing's statue in Manchester appears twice in the article. Is this necessary? SimonTrew (talk) 21:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Why not an actual picture of the man someplace in the article? It seems odd that there isn't one. --Mrnorwood (talk) 15:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I too recommend a photo that is free to use. I'll stop short of doing it myself. This is not my baby. Redding7 (talk) 14:19, 7 April 2009 (UTC)Chris Redding

rkbexplorer.com links added in good faith

A few refs have been added lately by User:Hugh.glaser, I am sure in good faith, but am a little uncomfortable about them because they link to a dot com. But actually it looks more like a portal for academic institutions. Any opitions? I haven't contacted the user directly yet.

SimonTrew (talk) 22:43, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Texai

Texai, an "open source project to create artificial intelligence" is planned for initial deployment on June 23, 2009 (Turing's birthday). www.texai.org Nino DeCoy (talk) 06:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)Nino DeCoyNino DeCoy (talk) 06:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

reliance on hodges, copeland

All crucial points on Turing's personal life appear to rely on Hodges biography. Hodges being a homosexual rights activist is likely to display some bias in order to make Turing into a poster child. His intentions may be proper but the tendency is probable. Some corroborating biographical sources would be good. Statements like "Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray" might hide that Murray was a rent boy, or that Turing had been grooming him or that Murray was using sex acts as a lure in order to steal from Turing. Or "Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment" might hide Turing having decided for himself to seek treatment or having viewed himself as being wrong to pursue a homosexual tryst. Such minor points change an onlookers whole conception of Turings mindset in respect of any homosexual activity. In my mind the subtleties should be confirmed if possible. Note turing.org.uk is effectively the same source.

Did Turing have any other homosexual liaisons? Was he bisexual?

Copeland seems to be a bit of a fanboy too. For example when talking on alanturing.net of Turing as being the originator of the idea of the stored program no mention appears to be made of those who developed the idea in parallel with Turing - Turing was an awesome mathematician, no doubt. No mention anywhere on alanturing.net of the suggestion of Turing having Asperger's syndrome either? To not even mention it seems strange. Pbhj (talk) 15:47, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure I understand what you're concerned about here. Turing was certainly homosexual, had many homosexual liaisons throughout his life, made no particular secret of his homosexuality, and admitted his relationship with Murray to the police. Pethaps a little bit could be added about Turing's brief relationship with Murray (Turing picked him up outside a cinema), as it was evidently an important factor in his life. Is that what you're getting at? --Malleus Fatuorum 16:21, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Things like http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Clarke_Joan.html which quotes Hodges as quoting Turing, speaking to his fiancé saying "... to not count on it working out as he had homosexual tendencies." lead away from the idea that he took part in a series of homosexual relationships. Perhaps it's just how the sources are quoted but I think they're showing some bias - The academic not mentioning mental illness or equal parallel achievement, the social biographer not mentioning (thought I now know he did, just that it's not quoted) potential heterosexual relationships. Your source on the cinema visit and it's addition, which moves to indicate more of Turing's lifestyle, would be good. I suppose it's that it has taken me only about 30mins to find 2 highly notable details on the counter-side of the general thrust of who Mr Turing was is my concern. Thanks for your input. Pbhj (talk) 16:40, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

On Computable Numbers pdf

I linked to a different "On Computable Numbers..." pdf in the Papers section. The previous one changed the original paper's typesetting in some sections. I tried to make sense of the paper from that link and couldn't. I read a version with the original typesetting and found it signigicantly easier. Compare Section 4 "Abbreviated Tables" from the different pdfs if you want to change it back. The new link is the one used in Wikipedia's "List of Important Publications in Computer Science". 99.190.81.26 (talk) 02:14, 15 July 2009 (UTC)