Half-eaten apple, world war and Alan Turing

“On the day I disappear, you will understand, from the twilight stars beyond the west, you will then inquire about me…”—just like this poem by Kazi Nazrul Islam, by the time the government of the United Kingdom admitted its mistake, it was already too late. Alan Turing, the theoretical pioneer of the modern computer, had already ended his own life over 5.5 decades before British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in 2009, said that the UK government had made a mistake in the 1950s. “The fault lay in the UK’s judicial and legal system. As a result, one of the most brilliant individuals in our history was unjustly sentenced. For this, the UK government is ashamed and apologetic,” he said.

But what is the point of admitting guilt so many years later? During his lifetime, the general public of the UK never even got to know about this brilliant man’s achievements. On the contrary, due to a ‘wrong’ judgement, he became a figure of public disdain. Yet, it was because of this very man that Britain managed to defeat Hitler’s formidable German army. Did he truly deserve such injustice? If the crime, for which he was punished, had been revealed during wartime when he was decoding secret Nazi missions one after another—would the British government have dared to punish and push their ultimate trump card towards death?

Probably not. Because that is politics. In the battlefield of politics, the gravest sins of the most vital soldier in tough times are often overlooked. But once their necessity ends, even the smallest matter is blown out of proportion—this tendency has existed among the powerful in all ages, and still exists today. A child was born in London on June 23, 1912. The child’s father Julius Turing was an ICS officer working in India. His mother Ethel Sara Stoney was born at Madras in India. Though British by birth, they had to live in India due to their profession. Once or twice a year, they’d go to London for long holidays. During one such visit, Alan Turing was born in London. He spent some time with his parents in India, only in the very first year of his life. Then, at just 15 months old, he had to begin living in London, separated from his parents, in the home of a retired colonel.

India was still a poverty-stricken third-world country. There were neither good schools nor proper healthcare. Moreover, child deaths from infectious diseases were a daily occurrence. In such a country, as a capable father, Julius didn’t think it reasonable to keep his sons with him. So, he arranged for his sons to stay with that colonel’s family and be enrolled in a good school. When they had long holidays, the parents would come to visit the boys. Later, the boys started attending school. Alan left the colonel’s house and moved to the school’s boarding facility with elder brother John. From childhood, Alan missed his parents terribly. This very factor helped shape him into a different kind of person.

Whether it’s modern Bangladesh or Britain of that era, every school has some rowdy boys. Their job is to pick on others. There were such boys in Alan’s boarding school; but because of elder brother John Turing’s presence, the bullies didn’t dare touch Alan. But John was older. He was already enrolled in another high school. After John moved to another, more advanced school, Alan, gentle and quiet by nature, became the victim of bullying in his own school.

Alan was already a quiet boy. Falling prey to ragging, he withdrew even further into himself. He became mentally weak. Perhaps that was the beginning of his transformation—who knows? But in that boarding school, one day he discovered a tragic truth about himself, a truth that would one day place him in the dock, and ultimately be the cause of his death.

Then US President Barack Obama delivered a special address in London’s Parliament on May 25, 2012. At one point in his speech, he mentioned three of Britain’s greatest individuals who had enriched global science with their contributions. Naturally, the first name was Sir Isaac Newton. Second on the list was Charles Darwin. The third name was a surprise. It wouldn’t have seemed odd if it had been Ernest Rutherford, Arthur Eddington, John Dalton—or even bigger names like Michael Faraday or James Clerk Maxwell. But surpassing all these giants, the third name on Obama’s list was Alan Turing! But why?

To understand the magnitude of Turing’s work, we must return to the 1940s of the last century. When Europe’s leaders were trembling amidst the chaos of World War II. The war began in 1939. Hitler’s Nazi flag was flying high in the skies of Europe. Germany began with Poland, and then one by one, subdued Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and even France. Italy, one of Europe’s major powers, was Hitler’s ally at that time. How long could Russia fight alone? Backed by the advanced technology of the United States, Russian soldiers were fighting as allies of Britain. But all were defeated by Hitler’s intellect. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Hitler’s navy was launching surprise attacks using submarines. These attacks were devastating Britain’s warships and cargo vessels. There was a severe crisis of food and trade. But the British could in no way anticipate the German army’s blitzkrieg plans. Even radar couldn’t detect the movements of the German U-boats.

How were they planning such precise attacks? What was their secret weapon? British military commanders had little trouble realising that the secret lay in encrypted communications. Messages were being sent via radio signals. But how could those encrypted signals be decoded? Enemy forces also intercepted those radio messages, but apart from some random letters and jumbled numbers, they meant nothing. Yet, encrypted wartime messages had been used over 2,000 years ago by Roman Emperor Julius Caesar. At first, they were simple. By replacing one letter with another, cipher codes were written.

If such a letter fell into enemy hands, without knowing the pattern, it would be impossible to understand. But experts eventually cracked the codes of ancient times quickly. So, after 2,000 years, such messages would no longer be effective. A new method was needed—one that wouldn’t be easy to crack. Around that time, a machine was developed to create highly complex codes. The machine’s name was Enigma, invented by Dutch engineer Hugo Koch. But Koch didn’t understand what the machine could be used for. That was realised by German engineer Arthur Scherbius. He bought the machine. At first, it looked like a simple typewriter, but its functionality was incomprehensible. The British soon learned that decoding the codes from this machine was no easy feat.

At that time, four ordinary officers from the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS)—Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander, and Stuart Milner— wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Winston Churchill on October 21, 1941, requesting to increase manpower GC&CS.

GC&CS’s office was in London. Its staff were directly engaged in code-breaking. It was a kind of intelligence agency. This institution had been founded just after World War I, in 1919. The British government had realised how important it was to intercept the code messages of the enemy to stay ahead in war. The second world war made this task even bigger and more difficult, due to the Enigma machine.

But no matter how complex, Turing knew no encrypted message was beyond decoding. All that was needed was the right tools and an increase in manpower. They needed more typists, engineers, linguists and mathematicians. Linguists were needed because they were skilled in decoding ancient inscriptions. It was they who deciphered Egyptian and Babylonian scripts by studying patterns. Their help might be needed to understand cipher code patterns. Engineers were necessary to repair and build essential equipment, and perhaps also to help break codes.

Why mathematicians?
This was the brainchild of Turing. He understood that cipher codes had become so complex that mathematicians were needed to decode the messages. The job of mathematicians is to find formulas for complex patterns through calculation. Turing believed that cipher codes could potentially be broken using mathematical formulas that could simplify even vast encrypted messages. What struck Turing most was the idea of building a machine to assist mathematicians in their calculations.

That’s why Turing and his colleagues wrote to Churchill. More staff were needed—but appealing to higher-ups hadn’t worked. So, they bypassed the chain of command and wrote directly to the top. Churchill granted their request. He instructed his ministers to meet GC&CS’s staffing demands. As a result, the agency’s workforce jumped from 200 to 1,500. Turing then started working in full swing. To break cipher codes, he used the theorem of British mathematician Thomas Bayes from a century earlier. Using this theorem, he devised a method to decode messages generated by the German Enigma machine. To make the process easier, he built a counter-machine to Enigma called the Bombe.

After that, British forces no longer suffered surprise attacks. Using decoded cipher messages, Turing could predict exactly when and where Hitler’s submarines would strike. He would relay this to British forces. Before the attack even began, British forces could successfully destroy the submarines. Failure after failure in the Atlantic, secret messages being exposed, German forces disoriented even in land battles. Under assault from British and Russian troops, they scattered. The result: Hitler’s inevitable defeat. Realising this, the Nazi leader shot himself. The Allied forces—British, Russian, and American—drove Nazi forces out of Europe. Then they entered Germany and conquered Hitler’s final strongholds. None of this would have been possible without Turing’s extraordinary accomplishments. Yet after the war, British forces never revealed his role to the public. So, the people of Britain never learned of the brilliance of a man named Alan Turing.

Turing’s greatness didn’t stop there. At age 22, as a Cambridge student, he took up a challenge posed by famed mathematician David Hilbert: was there any mechanical process by which one could determine whether mathematical propositions were true or false? While working on this, Turing devised a thought experiment—a tape inscribed with numbers. A machine would scan these problems and compute the answers. That tape was the era’s programming tool. Turing explained how this tool would function and how best to construct such a machine. He wrote a 35-page research paper. Needless to say, today’s Microsoft empire of computing power began with such a punched-paper programming tool—its theoretical pioneer was Alan Turing.

At school, Turing realised he was homosexual. But he had no control over it. He had a secret relationship with another homosexual friend. That friend died young, from tuberculosis. It was a major emotional blow for Turing. Then came the war. When peace returned, he had much free time. He was also working on building a modern computer for the British government. Around that time, Turing found another sexual partner—Arnold, a young man. Secretly, Arnold visited Turing’s house. Arnold had a petty thief friend, who learned that Turing’s home was filled with valuables. So, he used the opportunity. Several expensive items were stolen. Turing went to the police.

Turing didn’t know this was the doing of his partner’s friend. The police investigated. The thief was caught. But in the process, Turing’s secret relationship with Arnold was exposed. At the time, not just in Britain, but across the world, homosexuality was a serious crime.

Turing was tried at the court. The judge gave him two options: prison or medical treatment. Turing chose treatment. Under government supervision, he was treated with hormone injections. These reduced his sexual drive, but prolonged hormone use caused side effects. Eventually, Turing developed breasts like a woman. This broke him mentally. In anger and despair, he committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple. It was June 7, 1954. Fifty-five years later came the British Prime Minister’s admission of guilt. But by then, Turing was far beyond any faults or forgiveness.

The famous computer and smartphone company Apple has a logo of a half-eaten apple. Many believe it symbolises Turing’s fatal poisoned apple. Every logo has a meaning. Since the concept of the modern computer originated in Turing’s mind, if Apple—a computer company—pays tribute through its logo, it would be meaningful. But Apple and the designer of the logo have never acknowledged this. They claim the bitten apple represents a byte in binary code. But if that were so, any fruit could have been used. But since the company is named Apple, the logo features an apple. Regardless of what’s in the logo, Turing must be credited for turning the tide of war—a credit he never received in his lifetime. At the time, even his country’s people didn’t know of this glory—but now, the whole world does.

Abdul Gaffar Rony: Science writer