Alan Turing: The Enigma (13 page)

20/12/29

Dear Turing,

Thank you very much for your letter. I was as sorry you did not get a schol as I was pleased that I did. What Mr Gow says means that you would have certainly got an Exhibition if you had put it down …

… Have had two of the clearest nights I have known. I have never seen Jupiter better and I could see 5 or 6 belts and even some detail on one of the large central belts. Last night I saw no. 1 satellite come out from eclipse. It appeared quite suddenly (during a few seconds) at some distance from Jupiter and looked very attractive. It is the first time I have seen one. I also saw Andromeda Neb. very clearly but did not stay out long. Saw spectrum of Sirius, Pollux and Betelgeux and also bright line spectrum of Orion nebula. Am at moment making a spectrograph. Will write again later. Happy Christmas etc. Yrs ever C.C.M.

Anything like ‘making a
spectrograph’ was far beyond the resources Alan enjoyed at Guildford, but he got hold of an old spherical glass lampshade, filled it with plaster of Paris, covered it with paper (which made him think about the nature of curved surfaces) and set out to mark in the constellations of fixed stars. Typically, he insisted on doing it from his own observation of the night sky, although it would more easily and accurately have been done from an atlas. He trained himself to wake at four o’clock in the morning so that he could mark in some stars not visible in the December evening sky, thus waking up his mother, who thought she had heard a burglar. This done, he wrote to Christopher about it, also asking him whether he thought it would be advisable to try for a college other than Trinity next year. If this was a test of affection, he was again rewarded, for Christopher replied:

5/1/30

Dear Turing,

… I really can’t give you any advice about exams because it is nothing to do with me and I feel it would not be quite write [
sic
]. John’s is a very good College, but of course I should prefer personally that you came to Trinity where I should see more of you.

I should be very interested to see your star map when it is done but I suppose it is quite impracticable to bring it to school or anything. I have often wanted to make a star globe, but have never really bothered, especially now I have got the star atlas going down to 6th mag. …

Recently I have been trying to find Nebulae. We saw some quite good ones the other night, one very good planetary in Draco 7th mag. 10”. Also we have been trying to find a Comet 8th mag. in Delphinus. … I wonder if you will be able to get hold of a telescope to look for it with your 1
1/2”
will be useless for such a small object. I tried to compute its orbit but failed miserably with 11 unsolved equations and 10 unknowns to be eliminated.

Have been getting on with plasticine. Rupert has been making horrid smelling soaps and fatty acids from … Rape Oil and Neal’s Boot Oil. …

This letter was written from his mother’s flat in London, where he was ‘to see the dentist … and also to avoid a dance at home.’ Next day he wrote again from the Clock House:

… I found the Comet at once in its assigned position. It was much more obvious and interesting than I had expected … I should say it is nearly 7th mag. It… should be obvious in your telescope. The best way is to learn the 4th & 5th mag. stars by heart, and move slowly to the right place, never losing sight of
all
the known stars. … In about half an hour I shall look again if it is clear (it has just
clouded) and see if I can notice its motion among the stars and also see what it looks like with the powerful eyepiece ( × 250). The group of 5 4th mag. stars in Delphinus come into the field of the finder in pairs. Yrs. C.C. Morcom.

But Alan had already seen the comet, though in a more haphazard manner

10/1/30

Dear Morcom,

Thank you very much for the map for finding the comet. On Sunday I think I must have seen it. I was looking at Delphinus and thinking it was Equuleus and saw something like this
[a tiny sketch
] rather hazy and about 3’ long. I am afraid I did not examine it very carefully. I then looked for the comet elsewhere in Vulpecula thinking it was Delphinus. I knew from the
Times
that there was a comet in Delphinus that day.

… The weather really is annoying for this comet. Both on Wednesday and today I have had it quite clear until sunset and then a bank of cloud comes over the region of Aquila. On Wednesday it cleared away just after the comet had set. …

Yours A.M. Turing

Please don’t always thank me for my letters so religeously. I’ll let you thank me for writing them legibly (if I ever do) if you like.

Alan plotted the course of the comet, as it sped from Equuleus into Delphinus in the frosty heavens. He took the primitive star globe back to school to show to Christopher. Blamey had left at Christmas, and Alan now had to share another study, in which the inky sphere was poised. There were but few constellations marked in, but they amazed the younger boys with Alan’s erudition.

Three weeks into the term, on 6 February, some visiting singers gave a concert of sentimental part-songs. Alan and Christopher were both present, and Alan was watching his friend, trying to tell himself, ‘Well, this isn’t the last time you’ll see Morcom.’ That night he woke up in the darkness. The abbey clock struck; it was a quarter to three. He got out of bed and looked out of the dormitory window to look at the stars. He often used to take his telescope to bed with him, to gaze at other worlds. The moon was setting behind Ross’s house, and Alan thought it could be taken as a sign of ‘goodbye to Morcom’.

Christopher was taken ill in the night, at just that time. He was taken by ambulance to London, where he underwent two operations. After six days of pain, at noon on Thursday 13 February 1930, he died.

^*
Warrington Lodge, now the Colonnade Hotel, Warrington Crescent, London W9. His baptism was at St Saviour’s Church, immediately across the road.

^*
Alan’s spelling and punctuation, here and throughout, is faithfully reproduced.

^*
Unlike Sir Archibald Campbell.

^*
These were practice papers.

^*
The series is:

It was a standard result in sixth form work, but the point was that he discovered it without the use of the elementary calculus. Perhaps the most remarkable thing was his seeing that such a series should exist at all

^*
Usually called ‘the law of geodesic motion’.

^*
The piece of work was marked ‘Nine wrong genders. 5/25. Very poor.’

2

The Spirit of Truth

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

No one had told Alan that Christopher Morcom had contracted bovine tuberculosis from drinking infected cows’ milk as a small boy; it had set up a pattern of internal damage, and his life had been constantly in danger. The Morcom family had gone to Yorkshire in 1927 to observe the total eclipse of the sun on 29 June, and Christopher had been taken terribly ill in the train coming back. He had undergone an operation, and that was why Alan had been struck by his thin features when he returned to school late that autumn.

‘Poor old Turing is nearly knocked out by the shock,’ a friend wrote from Sherborne to Matthew Blamey next day. ‘They must have been awfully good friends.’ It was both less and more than that. On his side, Christopher had at last been becoming friendly, rather than polite. But on Alan’s side – he had surrendered half his mind, only to have it drop into a void. No one at Sherborne could have understood. But on the Thursday that Christopher died, ‘Ben’ Davis, the junior housemaster, did send to Alan a note telling him to prepare for the worst. Alan immediately wrote
¹
to his mother, asking her to send flowers to the
funeral, which was held on the Saturday, at dawn. Mrs Turing wrote back at once and suggested that Alan himself write to Mrs Morcom. This he did on the Saturday.

15/2/30

Dear Mrs Morcom,

I want to say how sorry I am about Chris. During the last year I worked with him continually and I am sure I could not have found anywhere another companion so brilliant and yet so charming and unconceited. I regarded my interest in my work, and in such things as astronomy (to which he introduced me) as something to be shared with him and I think he felt a little the same about me.
Although that interest is partly gone, I know I must put as much energy if not as much interest into my work as if he were alive, because that is what he would like me to do. I feel sure that you could not possibly have had a greater loss.

Yours sincerely, Alan Turing

I should be extremely grateful if you could find me sometime a little snapshot of Chris, to remind me of his example and of his efforts to make me careful and neat. I shall miss his face so, and the way he used to smile at me sideways. Fortunately I have kept all his letters.

Alan had awoken at dawn, at the time of the funeral:

I am so glad the stars were shining on Saturday morning, to pay their tribute as it were to Chris. Mr O’Hanlon had told me when it was to take place so that I was able to follow him with my thoughts.

Next day, Sunday, he wrote again, perhaps in more composed form, to his mother:

16/2/30

Dear Mother,

I wrote to Mrs Morcom as you suggested and it has given me a certain relief.…

… I feel sure that I shall meet Morcom again somewhere and that there will be some work for us to do together, and as I believed there was for us to do here. Now that I am left to do it alone I must not let him down but put as much energy into it, if not as much interest, as if he were still here. If I succeed I shall be more fit to enjoy his company than I am now. I remember what G O’H said to me once ‘Be not weary of well doing for in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not’ and Bennett
^*
who is very kind on these occasions ‘Heaviness may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning’. Rather Plymouth brotherish perhaps. I am sorry he is leaving. It never seems to have occurred to me to try and make any other friends besides Morcom, he made everyone seem so ordinary, so that I am afraid I did not really appreciate our ‘worthy’ Blamey and his efforts with me for instance.…

On receiving Alan’s letter, Mrs Turing wrote to Mrs Morcom:

Feb. 17 30

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, and so hard not to see here the fulfilment, that I am sure there will be, of all the promise of Christopher’s exceptional brains and lovable character. Alan told me one couldn’t help liking Morcom and he was himself so devoted to him that I too shared in his devotion and admiration: during exams he always reported Christopher’s successes. He was feeling very desolate when he wrote asking me to send flowers on his behalf and in case he feels he cannot write to you himself I know he would wish me to send his sympathy with mine.