ALAN TURING'S PERSONAL ARCHIVE, INCLUDING ENIGMA CODE-BREAKING WORK, AUCTIONED IN UK
A collection of rare scientific documents penned by the celebrated mathematician Alan Turing has been sold at auction in Lichfield, UK, for a record-breaking £465,400 (€544,400). These documents were discovered in an attic of a property in Bermondsey, London, and were almost discarded during a clear-out.
Among the rarest items auctioned was an autographed copy of Turing's 1938 doctoral thesis, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, which fetched £110,500 (€129,200). Also sold was his seminal paper On Computable Numbers, famously known as the "Turing proof," which introduced the concept of a universal computing machine to the world in 1936. The collection also included The Chemical Basis Of Morphogenesis, from 1952, Turing's last major published work, which sold for £19,500 (€22,800).
Discovery of Turing's Hidden Treasures
The materials were originally given to Turing's friend and colleague, Norman Routledge, by Turing's mother, Ethel. Routledge had preserved the documents and, upon his death, left them to his sister. Auction house Hansons had initially estimated the lots would sell for £40,000-£60,000 each, but On Computable Numbers alone sold for £208,000 (€243,000).
"Nothing could have prepared me for what I found in that bag. These simple academic papers were absolutely electrifying – they are the bedrock of modern computing. Handling them was both a humbling challenge and an obsession," said Jim Spencer, Director of Rare Book Auctions.
"Knowing the tragic arc of Turing's life only adds to the emotional weight. He was treated terribly despite all he had done and yet, here, his ideas remain alive, relevant, and revolutionary," Spencer added, calling Turing's archive "a once-in-a-lifetime discovery, not just for collectors, but to preserve the history of one of the greatest minds in history."
Turing's Wartime Legacy and Posthumous Recognition
Turing is widely regarded as the father of computer science. He played a pivotal role in deciphering the Nazi's Enigma code during World War II, a story dramatically depicted in the 2014 film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
Tragically, after the war, Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts and accepted a procedure commonly referred to as chemical castration as an alternative to imprisonment. The mathematician took his own life on June 7, 1954, at the age of 41.
Following a public campaign in 2009, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a formal public apology for the "appalling way" Turing was treated after the war. Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013. Since 2017, a law that retroactively pardoned individuals convicted of homosexual offenses has been fittingly dubbed the "Alan Turing Law."
