Brilliant mathematician Alan Turing died in an apparent suicide after undergoing chemical castration, but the inquest seems to have rushed to a conclusion:
At a conference in Oxford on Saturday, Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland will question the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest.
He believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict.
Indeed, he argues, Turing’s death may equally probably have been an accident.
[. . .]
The motive for suicide is easy to imagine. In 1952, after he had reported a petty burglary, Turing found himself being investigated for “acts of gross indecency” after he revealed he had had a male lover in his house.
Faced with the prospect of imprisonment, and perhaps with it the loss of the mathematics post he held at Manchester University, which gave him access to one of the world’s only computers, Turing accepted the alternative of “chemical castration” — hormone treatment that was supposed to suppress his sexual urges.
It is often repeated that the chemicals caused him to grow breasts, though Turing is only known to have mentioned this once.
[. . .]
In his authoritative biography, Andrew Hodges suggests that the experiment was a ruse to disguise suicide, a scenario Turing had apparently mentioned to a friend in the past.
But Jack Copeland argues the evidence should be taken at face value — that an accidental death is certainly consistent with all the currently known circumstances.
The problem, he complains, is that the investigation was conducted so poorly that even murder cannot be ruled out. An “open verdict”, recognising this degree of ignorance, would be his preferred position.
None of this excuses the treatment of Turing during his final years, says Prof Copeland.
