Prof

by Dermot Turing

  Friday 6 December, 1929. Chris travelled from Sherborne to Cambridge today, via Town. He is going to try for a Scholarship at Trinity. Went to Waterloo to meet him 11.15, but found train came in earlier & he had left. Came straight back to flat & Chris & his friend Allan Turing came next minute. Took them to studio & they tried marble chipping.

  Marble chipping under the guidance of someone’s mother was a new experience for Alan. Indeed, Isobel Morcom was a new experience. For Alan’s own mother, the conventions of India were still ingrained, and art could go as far as watercolour but no further. The dangers and physicality of marble were quite out of bounds.

  Not Alan’s mother. Isobel Morcom, sculptor and foster-mother of science, by Walter Paget RA.

  Alan Turing’s relationship with Isobel Morcom began when Chris died. Alan’s house tutor was worried about how he would take the unexpected news, and broke it to him as gently as possible; it was suggested Alan might write in condolence to Mrs Morcom, and Ethel Turing agreed when Alan told her the news. Ethel also wrote, despite not having been properly introduced:

  Dear Mrs Morcom,

  Our boys were such great friends that I want to tell you how much I feel for you, as one mother for another. It must be terribly lonely for you, & so hard not to see here the fulfilment, that I am sure there will be, of all the promise of Christopher’s exceptional brains & loveable character. Alan told me one couldn’t help liking Morcom & he was himself so devoted to him that I too shared in his devotion & admiration: during exams he always reported Christopher’s successes.

  He was feeling vy desolate when he wrote asking me to send flowers on his behalf & in case he feels he cannot write to you himself I know he would wish me to send his sympathy with mine.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ethel S. Turing

  But Alan had written, and it was Alan, rather than Ethel, who could help Isobel Morcom in her grief. Almost immediately, the Morcoms offered Alan Chris’s berth on their Easter trip to Gibraltar. A Sherborne schoolmaster – Mr Gervis, who taught chemistry – was going as well. Ethel visited Isobel Morcom in her London flat in early April 1930 and they had a long conversation about Chris; and a few days later Alan was aboard the Kaisar-i-Hind sharing a cabin with Chris’s older brother Rupert. The Morcoms took to Alan; and Alan took to the Morcoms. He even had interesting conversations with Rupert, which wouldn’t have happened with John back in Guildford. When the ship docked at Southampton eleven days later, Alan didn’t go home to Guildford. He went to Bromsgrove, where the Morcoms lived, and spent a few days ‘helping’ Isobel with Chris’s books and papers.

  Escaping the stifling boredom of Guildford during the holidays by retreating to Bromsgrove became a routine for Alan; even if Mother wanted to come too. In August 1930 they both spent a week with the Morcoms, and Alan was prevailed upon to write his impressions of Chris, as well as an unsafe piece on the ‘Nature of Spirit’, appeasing the Christianity of both mothers without compromising his own (church-going – not that there was much choice) agnosticism. An invitation was issued for summer 1931, when Alan left Sherborne, but for whatever reason Alan went to Sark with O’Hanlon and the senior Westcott boys instead. Further visits followed, in 1932, 1933 and 1936; by 1932 Alan was in control and able to go to Bromsgrove alone.

  On the water

  Alan Turing didn’t want to go to King’s, but as will be seen, this choice of college could not have had better consequences for his country. Mathematicians are, or were, supposed to go to Trinity, the college of Newton (and the college which had offered Chris Morcom a scholarship). But Trinity had filled all their scholarships, and their arrangement was to pass on near-miss candidates to King’s. King’s offered Alan his scholarship, and so to King’s he went. Just as Sherborne had struggled to modernise itself in the Victorian era, so had King’s. To start with, King’s was a sister foundation to Eton, and the college was barred to non-Etonians until 1861. Back then, it was not much of a place for academic glory. King’s had had a tradition of ignoring university exams, and had only conceded that its scholars sit such things in 1851; nobody at King’s got the top maths classification of ‘senior wrangler’ until 1885. Then there was the absurdity of the chapel: the college was founded for a provost and seventy scholars, yet the building is the size of a cathedral, with fan-vaulting, misericords and stunning stained-glass windows to match. The rest of the architecture at King’s became a muddle: an exuberant pseudo-Palladian white marble oddity by James Gibbs, quite out of place next to the chapel; and a gloomy range of institutional stone buildings by William Wilkins which give the college a passably grand dining-hall.

  By 1888 it was time for a serious change, and the fellows elected Augustus Austen Leigh as provost. As well as building an attractive court of residential buildings adjacent to the river (in which Alan would eventually have rooms), Leigh set out to make teaching and academic excellence the purpose of the college, and began to attract some brains to the place. We will meet some of them later. By the time Alan arrived in 1931, King’s was at the top of the academic tables, and (unlike many other colleges) King’s required all its students to sit the ‘tripos’ exams for an honours degree. If you wanted to study at King’s, you now had to study.

  Sixty-four other young men went up to King’s at the same time as Alan Turing in 1931. Only six were Etonians – more than from any other school bar Winchester – and two others were from Sherborne. One of the Shirburnians was from Ross’s House, but he had left to go to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1928, so missed the shock of Christopher Morcom’s sudden death. The other Shirburnian was John Patterson, a bit younger than Alan and from another house; Patterson would go on to become Captain of the King’s College Boat Club, of which Alan himself was to be a member for the next few years.

  As a novice rower, Alan did rather well, winning the first of several tankards for a performance in trial eights in his first term. Rowing provided a social life to counterbalance the academic side of things, and he participated enthusiastically and with occasional distinction until, and beyond, his graduation. The highlight of the rowing season was the ‘bumps’, in which boats line up behind one another and try to bump the one in front. In the May 1934 bumps Alan was juggling difficult and conflicting duties: not only did the races coincide with his final exams, but Julius Turing was in hospital and Alan was trying to fit in a visit to his father. Patterson recorded in the Boat Club log that it was

  unfortunate to lose A M Turing who, owing to his father’s illness had been sleeping at home and returning each day to race, but was unable to get back for the last night. He rowed consistently well, and under the circumstances, he had our admiration and sympathy.

  There was more rowing drama the following year, when Alan was still at King’s preparing for ‘Part III’, the supplementary post-honours course for scholar mathematicians. By this stage Alan had, in theory, retired from rowing, but the second May boat had trouble:

  Alan’s trophies from the water war. Alan ‘shared’ the No. 5 seat honours in 1935, replacing the injured William Colles on the last day of the races.

  Third day. Colles was unfortunately injured in a brawl. Turing took his place, the change making but little difference. An excellent start, and made their bump in the gut (St Catherine’s IV). Fourth day. Made short work of Peterhouse III just before the ditch.

  The outcome was excellent: King’s II had made a bump every day, earning the honour of a set of ornamental oars. One of these is now on display in the museum at Bletchley Park.

  King’s, then, was not just about academic excellence. There were ‘hearties’ and ‘highbrows’. There was the Chetwynd Society (‘a somewhat noisy drinking club for popular athletes’), there were dunkings in the fountain of the front court for those who offended too grossly against institutional norms, there were musical performances in the chapel complete with risqué costumes, and Vive-las1 were sung at smoke-filled gatherings such as took place after the annual Founder’s Feast. For the highbrow
s there were various intellectual debating clubs. Alan didn’t fit into any of the clubs, but at King’s just being highbrow was perfectly in order. It was a bit like Sherborne, only bigger and better.

  Alan had friends beyond the boat club. David Champernowne and James Atkins were also maths scholars. For a while, Atkins was rather more than a friend; and Champernowne became a life-long ally with whom Alan would write a chess-playing computer program in 1948 (the ‘TuroChamp’) and one of the four men to inherit under his will. Champernowne was remarkable: he was the discoverer of the ‘Champernowne constant’ C10 = 0.123456789101112…, which is said to have important properties. It’s not everyone who has a constant named after them – and Champ’s achievement was to have his discovery and analysis published in the Journal of the London Mathematical Society in 1933, when he was still in his second undergraduate year. There was also Fred Clayton, a classicist, who would go on to become a fellow of King’s and have a wartime career in intelligence.

  Alan fitted in at King’s. In part this was because homosexuality was part of the establishment, almost suffused into the stonework. Back before the Great War, men studying classics in all-male schools and colleges were constantly admiring each other, falling in love with each other, and occasionally going further still. With some of them, the object was ‘sensual pursuit of beautiful young men’, involving Kingsmen such as John Maynard Keynes, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, E.M. Forster and John Sheppard, and other members – most famously, Lytton Strachey – of the Conversazione Society, more familiar to us as ‘the Apostles’. The Apostles formed another link between King’s and Trinity, from where the members were drawn, provided they had the requisite qualifications, which seem to have included intellectual arrogance, aesthetic priggishness and yellow hair. In theory the Apostles met to debate topical and intellectual issues with complete candour and freedom of speech: ‘people and books reinforced one another, intelligence joined hands with affection, speculation became a passion, and discussion was made profound by love.’ What is more, those men could find classical justification in the culture of ancient Greece, as explained by the scholar Julie Anne Tadeo:

  Dear Boy. Provost Sheppard’s avuncular approach to governance ensured Alan’s early election to a fellowship.

  In an 1896 publication Dickinson promoted the ‘Greek View of Life’. In particular, Dickinson admired the Greek’s gendered system of work and love. He praised the women of Ancient Greece who nurtured the state’s future soldiers and citizens but noted their shortcomings as emotional and intellectual companions of men. As objects of romantic love, women merely complemented men, while in male-male love, the superior male self was duplicated. The Greek View of Life was also Dickinson’s response to the recent Wilde trials. Passionate friendships between Greek men, he argued, were an ‘institution’, particularly pederastic ties between youths and adults, and should be emulated, not condemned. Dickinson and the other Apostles evoked the friendships of Achilles and Patroclus, Solon and Peisistratus, and Socrates and Alcibiades.

  The Apostles would later become notorious for including Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, near-contemporaries of Alan Turing as well as Russian spies, among its members. Unlike David Champernowne, Alan was neither elegant nor outspoken enough to be admitted to the elite and secretive Apostles. His hair was not yellow: it was dark and lanky and not in the least bit aesthetic. After the Great War, a more sombre spirit had reined in the Edwardian outpouring of pseudo-classicism; in any case, much of the Greek view of life had been merely posturing, because even at Cambridge it was dangerous for men to indulge too openly in homosexual relations. Nonetheless, there were still vestiges of the classical culture at King’s College in the early 1930s. Keynes was still very much in evidence, Dickinson was still around, and Sheppard was vice-provost.

  In February 1932, towards the end of Alan’s second term at King’s, Isobel Morcom came to Cambridge. It was in the middle of the Lent bumps.

  My dear Mrs Morcom,

  Thank you for your post-card & for asking me to dinner on Friday. I can certainly manage it, thank you very much. I have just been round to Brookes. He says he will be able to come. His college is Trinity Hall & his rooms are at 2 Round Church street. Fortunately I was able to get you rooms at the Bull for Friday. I thought possibly they would be full because of the Lents. I shall be rowing, so will have to be rather abstinent on Friday evening. First day of Lents is to-morrow. Am quite excited about them already. Was Chris going to row when if he had come up?

  I shall have to go down to the river now. Looking forward very much to seeing you on Friday.

  Yours

  Alan

  I have just one lecture on Saturday morning 9–10.

  The Bull Hotel was right next door to King’s. After dinner, Isobel Morcom recorded that Victor Brookes took the Morcoms ‘round to see his rooms (not in College). He is at Trinity Hall. He had Chris’ portrait over his writing table & the smiling photo on his dressing table. He loved Chris.’ The next day ‘Alan came round at 10 & took us to see his rooms in King’s then we went into Chapel & then on to Trinity. Alan showed us where Chris’ and his rooms were when they came for their Scholarship exam, then we went in to Trinity Chapel & I imagined where Chris would have sat. (Alan’s rooms were very untidy in contrast to Victor’s).’

  The domination of the Germans

  Perhaps the distractions and relative liberties of university life led Alan away from the path of study in his first year. For whatever reason, he underachieved in his first year maths exams, being ranked only in the second class. He was heartily ashamed:

  My dear Mrs Morcom

  I am up here for the ‘Long’1 so that your letter has just reached me from home. I remembered Chris’ birthday & would have written to you but for the fact that I found myself quite unable to express what I wanted to say. […]

  I suppose you saw that I had only got a 2nd in 1st part of Maths. I can hardly look anyone in the face after it. I won’t try to offer an explanation. I shall just have to get a 1st in Mays2 to show I’m not really so bad as that.

  Yours affectionately,

  Alan M. Turing

  In 1933 Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. The League of Nations had already decided not to punish Japan for the invasion of Manchuria, and ‘collective security’ was proved to be a chimera. At King’s, as elsewhere, there was much debate about the future, and many predicted that the country would be entangled in another war. In May 1933 Alan wrote to his mother, with a further round of excuses for avoiding holidays at home:

  Dear Mother

  Thank you for socks etc. No hurry for map. Daddy tells me you are shutting up house on June 6. I shall probably stay here till about 16th. I go for walking tour on 21st to 28th. Am thinking of going to Russia some time in vac but have not yet quite made up my mind.

  I have joined an organisation called the ‘Anti-War Council’. Politically rather communist. Its programme is principally to organise strikes amongst munitions and chemical workers when government intends to go to war. It gets up a guarantee fund to support the workers who strike. […]

  Yours,

  Alan

  Beyond the façade of the Wilkins screen along the front court of King’s, there was a world recovering from the Great Depression. One of the fellows wrote later:

  Even the most complacent student could not be blind to the plight of the working class. There was (so far as I know) no don in King’s who actively recruited members for the Communist Party; but Communists did their best to infiltrate any College society they could, whatever its aim.

  It was fashionable to be leftish at Cambridge in the 1930s, and most of the country was dismayed by sabre-rattling; in 1933 the full horror of the Nazi and Stalin regimes had yet to be revealed. Only if you were in the Apostles did Russian trips and being rather communist turn into something more sinister, though it seems unlikely that Ethel Turing would have approved of politically motivated strikes. Nothing more appears about communism in Alan’s let
ters, but later in 1933 he reports to Mother the successful protest against a showing of Our Fighting Navy at the Tivoli Cinema (‘blatant militarist propaganda’). It does not seem that Alan was greatly attracted by activism; and he formed his own views about Nazism during a couple of holidays to Austria and Germany in 1934. In 1933, though, he spent a week on retreat with the Morcoms; in that year he had begun to study again.

  The Morcom Prize for Science. Robinson Crusoe is not a science book and is still in mint condition; John von Neumann’s Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik bears tea-stains to prove it has been read.

  Alan was getting interested in the logical aspects of mathematics. One of the prize books awarded to Alan by Sherborne was Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik (Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics) by John von Neumann, whom we will encounter again. (Sherborne was sniffy about prize books. Writing to Isobel Morcom in December 1932 about his choices for the Christopher Morcom prize, Alan had explained, ‘In 1930 they were bound in the same way as other school prizes, but in 1931 Mr Boughey relaxed this condition but said that if I got books not bound in full calf they could not be signed by him.’ So the copy of Robinson Crusoe, a 1930 prize rich with calf, marbling, gilt, bookplate and signature, and displayed in the museum at Bletchley Park, is wholly untouched. Von Neumann’s book, by contrast, was read.) Alan reported that von Neumann was ‘very interesting, & not at all too difficult reading, although the applied mathematicians seem to find it rather too strong meat’.