Read Online Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Andrew Hodges
Tags: History, Biography & Autobiography, Computers, Science & Technology, Mathematics, History & Philosophy
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, if only to reject it as too childish and vague, and could well have learnt the basic ideas of chemistry from its multitude of little ‘experiments’ with household substances. The prophetic spark of enquiry lay in his trying to combine the ideas of chemical formulae on the one hand with the mechanistic description of the body on the other.
Chemistry was not the Turing parents’ forte , but in November he found a more reliable source of information: ‘I have come into great luck here: there is an Encyclopedia that is 1st form property.’ And at Christmas 1924 he was given a set of chemicals, crucibles and test-tubes, and allowed to use them in the cellar of Ker Sammy , their villa in the Rue du Casino. He heaved great quantities of sea-weed back from the beach in order to extract a minute amount of iodine. This was much to the amazement of John, who with different eyes saw Dinard as an expatriate English colony of the bright 1920s, and spent his time on tennis, golf, dancing and flirting in the Casino.
There was an English schoolmaster in the neighbourhood, whom Alan’s parents employed to coach Alan for the Common Entrance examination, who found himself plied with questions about science. In March 1925, back at school, Alan wrote:
I came out in the same place in Common Entrance * this term as last with 53% average. I got 69% in French.
But it was the chemistry that mattered:
Iwonder whether I could get an earthenware retort anywhere for some high-heat actions. I have been trying to learn some Organic Chemistry, when I began if I saw something like this
H(CH 2 ) 17 CO 2 H(CH 2 ) 2 C
I would try and work it out like this C 21 H 40 O 2 which might be all sorts of things it is a kind of oil. I find the Graphic formulae help too, thus Alcohol is
while Methyl ether HCH 2 O CH 2 H or C 2 H 6 O
you see they shew the molecular arrangement.
And then a week later:
… The earthenware retort takes the place of a crucible when the essential product is a gas which is very common at high temperatures. I am making a collection of experiments in the order I mean to do them in. I always seem to want to make things from the thing that is commonest in nature and with the least waste in energy.
For Alan wasnow conscious of his own ruling passion. The longing for the simple and ordinary which would later emerge in so many ways was not for him a mere ‘back to nature’ hobby, a holiday from the realities of civilisation. To him it was life itself, a civilisation from which everything else came as a distraction.
To his parents the priorities were the other way round. Mr Turing was not at all the man for airs and graces; a man who would insist on walking rather than take a taxi, there was a touch of the desert island mentality in his character. But nothing altered the fact that chemistry was merely the amusement allowed to Alan on his holidays and that what mattered was that at thirteen he had to go on to a public school. In the autumn of 1925 Alan sat the Common Entrance for Marlborough, and to the surprise of all did rather well. (He had not been allowed to try for a scholarship.) But at this point John played a decisive part in the life of his strange brother. ‘For God’s sake don’t send him here,’ he said, ‘it will crush the life out of him.’
Alan posed a difficult problem. It was not in question that he must adapt to public school life. But what public school would cater best for a boy whose principal concern was to do experiments with muddy jam jars in the coal cellar? It was a contradiction in terms. As Mrs Turing saw it, 11
Though he had been loved and understood in the narrower homely circle of his preparatory school, it was because I foresaw the possible difficulties for the staff and himself at a public school that I was at such pains to find the right one forhim, lest if he failed in adaptation to public school life he might become a mere intellectual crank.
Her pains were not
Chemistry was not the Turing parents’ forte , but in November he found a more reliable source of information: ‘I have come into great luck here: there is an Encyclopedia that is 1st form property.’ And at Christmas 1924 he was given a set of chemicals, crucibles and test-tubes, and allowed to use them in the cellar of Ker Sammy , their villa in the Rue du Casino. He heaved great quantities of sea-weed back from the beach in order to extract a minute amount of iodine. This was much to the amazement of John, who with different eyes saw Dinard as an expatriate English colony of the bright 1920s, and spent his time on tennis, golf, dancing and flirting in the Casino.
There was an English schoolmaster in the neighbourhood, whom Alan’s parents employed to coach Alan for the Common Entrance examination, who found himself plied with questions about science. In March 1925, back at school, Alan wrote:
I came out in the same place in Common Entrance * this term as last with 53% average. I got 69% in French.
But it was the chemistry that mattered:
Iwonder whether I could get an earthenware retort anywhere for some high-heat actions. I have been trying to learn some Organic Chemistry, when I began if I saw something like this
H(CH 2 ) 17 CO 2 H(CH 2 ) 2 C
I would try and work it out like this C 21 H 40 O 2 which might be all sorts of things it is a kind of oil. I find the Graphic formulae help too, thus Alcohol is
while Methyl ether HCH 2 O CH 2 H or C 2 H 6 O
you see they shew the molecular arrangement.
And then a week later:
… The earthenware retort takes the place of a crucible when the essential product is a gas which is very common at high temperatures. I am making a collection of experiments in the order I mean to do them in. I always seem to want to make things from the thing that is commonest in nature and with the least waste in energy.
For Alan wasnow conscious of his own ruling passion. The longing for the simple and ordinary which would later emerge in so many ways was not for him a mere ‘back to nature’ hobby, a holiday from the realities of civilisation. To him it was life itself, a civilisation from which everything else came as a distraction.
To his parents the priorities were the other way round. Mr Turing was not at all the man for airs and graces; a man who would insist on walking rather than take a taxi, there was a touch of the desert island mentality in his character. But nothing altered the fact that chemistry was merely the amusement allowed to Alan on his holidays and that what mattered was that at thirteen he had to go on to a public school. In the autumn of 1925 Alan sat the Common Entrance for Marlborough, and to the surprise of all did rather well. (He had not been allowed to try for a scholarship.) But at this point John played a decisive part in the life of his strange brother. ‘For God’s sake don’t send him here,’ he said, ‘it will crush the life out of him.’
Alan posed a difficult problem. It was not in question that he must adapt to public school life. But what public school would cater best for a boy whose principal concern was to do experiments with muddy jam jars in the coal cellar? It was a contradiction in terms. As Mrs Turing saw it, 11
Though he had been loved and understood in the narrower homely circle of his preparatory school, it was because I foresaw the possible difficulties for the staff and himself at a public school that I was at such pains to find the right one forhim, lest if he failed in adaptation to public school life he might become a mere intellectual crank.
Her pains were not
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