[HN Gopher] Alan Turing's biggest fan remains the real enigma
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       Alan Turing's biggest fan remains the real enigma
        
       Author : Hooke
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2021-06-20 18:01 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.westword.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.westword.com)
        
       | bitwize wrote:
       | I never knew Turing had his own Blue Tulip Rose Read.
        
       | teraflop wrote:
       | > Alan Turing remained relatively obscure until 2012, when the
       | British government declassified key documents that revealed the
       | extent to which his code-breaking skills helped to undermine the
       | Germans' enigma machine in World War Two, changing the course of
       | the war and giving the Allies a significant advantage over their
       | Nazi adversaries.
       | 
       | That's a rather odd claim to make. The ACM's Turing Award has
       | been given out since 1966; Turing's crucial role in the breaking
       | of Enigma was revealed in the 70's. In 1999, he was one listed as
       | one of Time magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th
       | century.
       | 
       | As far as I can determine, the only new information that was
       | declassified in 2012 was a couple of technical papers from
       | Turing's work at Bletchley Park. Any relationship to public
       | awareness of his life seems entirely coincidental.
        
         | nextstep wrote:
         | They might just mean to a general, American audience.
        
           | teraflop wrote:
           | Oh, it's definitely true that general public knowledge of
           | Turing's life and work has increased over the years. I just
           | don't think it has anything to do with those "key documents"
           | that were released in 2012, as opposed to, you know, the
           | movie about his life and the public apology/pardon he
           | received around the same time.
        
             | rudyfink wrote:
             | Alan Turing's Google NGram certainly supports your
             | impression that "general public knowledge of Turing's life
             | and work has increased over the years."
             | 
             | https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Alan+Turing&y
             | e...
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-22 23:01 UTC)