FOM: Turing, Gandy and the British Secret Service

[Martin Davis]

At 04:38 PM 4/6/99 +0400, Andrian-Richard-David Mathias wrote:

>Turing died of cyanide poisoning. His mother wrote a life of him 
>advancing the view that his death was accidental; he had been using cyanide 
>for some biological experiments. 
>
>In an informal conversation with me and others, Gandy said that 
>Andrew Hodges, the author of the book about Turing, had originally intended to 
>state that Turing had been killed by the British Secret Service 
>(presumably because they would view him as a security risk) 
>but that he, Gandy, had persuaded Hodges not to make that statement. 
>
>A.R.D.Mathias
>
>
At Andrew Hodges request, I append the follwoing from him on this subject. I
only want to add that I (and many readers of this list) concur with his warm
appreciation of Robin Gandy.

Martin
********************************************************************************
Andrew Hodges writes with comments on the posting by
Andrian-Richard-David Mathias
<Andrian-Richard-David.Mathias at univ-reunion.fr>
Subject: FOM: Turing, Gandy and the British Secret Service

Actually, for chemistry experiments of an elementary 'do it yourself' kind.
In particular he had gold-plated a teaspoon using some electrolytic
solution involving cyanide.

>In an informal conversation with me and others, Gandy said that
>Andrew Hodges, the author of the book about Turing, had originally intended to
>state that Turing had been killed by the British Secret Service
>(presumably because they would view him as a security risk)
>but that he, Gandy, had persuaded Hodges not to make that statement.

This is an oversimplification on Robin Gandy's part, but one that would be
pardonable in the context of informal conversation.

When I embarked on the biographical project in February 1977, I did indeed
raise at the outset the serious possibility that Turing had been
assassinated, as a question that should be investigated. I didn't 'intend
to state' this as a conclusion. In fact, by 1983 when my work was finished
I had come to the conclusion that it was suicide.

Robin did indeed argue against the assassination possibility, essentially
on the grounds that such things do not happen in England. But it would be
inaccurate to say that this decided my verdict. What weighed with me rather
more was the picture I formed of Turing's suicide as (very successfully)
contrived to allow his mother to think it was an accident - playing on all
the childhood nagging about dangerous chemicals and dirty fingernails. Even
more striking for me, was the story I had from James Atkins, who was
Turing's contemporary as a mathematics student, and his first lover.
According to this Turing had outlined such a plan back in 1937. (See p. 568
of my book). Taking these together with many other factors, I was convinced
that the manner of his death was (like so many things) individual to Alan
Turing, and could hardly have been engineered by anyone else.

Readers of my book will know, however, that I put in a large amount of
material about the 1952-4 social and political history background, and
comment about questions to which answers are still unknown, e.g. as to the
cryptanalytic consultancy work that Turing had continued to do for the
British government between 1948 and 1952, and as to what restrictions on
his movements he would have faced in 1954, at a particularly tense period
of the Cold War. In my view there was a serious and tragic conflict in his
life between the desire for intellectual and sexual freedom, and his own
free decision to work at the highest levels of secrecy for the state. I do
not believe his suicide can be fairly discussed without taking this into
account. I haven't changed my views since 1983 on this, and indeed I
haven't changed my *basic* perspective since 1977.

Robin would not have written about Alan Turing's life and death in anything
like the same way as me. (When interviewed for a BBC television documentary
in 1991, his main point, when asked about Alan Turing's death, was that one
cannot explain *anyone's* behaviour.) He probably continued to consider my
discussion of the political background as something fanciful. But we agreed
to differ on this.

I cannot leave this topic without expressing the warmest appreciation for
the frequent and long meetings I had with Robin, and the incredible
generosity of the help he gave. He is etched on my memory, just as he is on
everyone else who knew him.

You may like to visit my webpage
http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/robin.html
for further comment.

Andrew Hodges