Alan Turing as portrayed by Derek Jacobi

Complexity

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Alan Turing is one of my favorite people (that's him in my avator), and Derek Jacobi did him the honor of portraying him superbly.

This is an excerpt of Derek Jacobi portraying Alan Turing during a job interview at Bletchley Park (code-breaking central in England during WWII)(the mathematics of the discussion is right-on):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV67Sj2jkVg


Alan Turing's trouble with convention, from the same film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ba6v7bahaU&feature=related


Alan Turing was barred from access to his government research facilities and was forced to undergo hormone treatement when he was convicted of homosexuality in (I believe) 1954. The following short documentary discusses his relationship, arrest, trial, and the events leading up to his death.

He killed himself in 1954 by biting into an apple poisoned with cyanide. It is suggested in the documentary by some that his death was accidental or murder, but sources I've read suggest that the manner of his death suggests it was suicide.

Kurt Goedel, Albert Einstein, and Alan Turing all became enamored of Disney's film Sleeping Beauty (I can't remember which of them introduced it to the others). It is thought that the gesture of biting into a poisoned apple was inspired by that film.

The Death of Alan Turing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7_WzNzHwJY
 
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Have you ever read Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon"? Alan Turing appears as a character in there, and in fact explains the workings of the Enigma machine (using a bicycle analogy) to one of the main characters in such a way that even I understood it. Good stuff.

(I'm going to have to go find a copy of this movie and watch it start to finish. It looks cool and I love Derek Jacobi.)
 
Perhaps I'm missing something that is right under my nose, but what is the name of the movie those clips were taken from?
 
There's always (I think) a More Info link at the top-right of each YouTube page


e.g. From You Tube: Alan Turing's trouble with convention: More Info
My favorite fragment from the documentary Breaking the Code, about the life and work of Alan Turing, the inventor of the digital computer and the one who broke the Nazi 'Enigma' code. The film is mostly about Turing breaking another code - the social conventions of his time.

I love Turing's attitude about how one should simply ignore the simple minded idiots that get offended by any departure from "normality", no matter how harmless that departure is. There are more important and interesting things to do than to worry about such idiots. Unfortunately however, in his case intolerance had the last word.
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Internet Movie DataBase: Breaking the Code (1996) (TV)
 
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Ahh, thank you six7s.

Sadly, it appears the movie was only released on VHS and is out of print.
 
It was originally a theatre production, I saw it at Bath Theatre Royal years ago, Jacobi was simply mesmerising. The film is essentially a recording of a performance made by the BBC for showing on TV. AFAIK it was never released in cinemas.
 
www.dramahouse.co.uk » Turing Memorial

logo1a.gif


The DRAFT AIMS of the COMMITTEE are as follows:

  1. To raise funds for and through a dedicated Charitable Foundation to create and administer a permanent, on-going, International Memorial to Alan Turing. This Memorial will be funded from an endowment enabling a bi-annual award - THE TURING - and a grant to be given to any ( young?) person who has demonstrated an originality of thought and integrity in their work and their life similar to Alan Turing's.
  2. To raise, by all possible means, a worldwide awareness of the facts and significance of Alan Turing's life and work. In particular by making freely available a 35mm print of Breaking the Code by Hugh Whitemore, starring Derek Jacobi as Alan Turing. This print will be used, with related published material, as an educational aid and fundraising tool worldwide.
  3. To disseminate information on, fund research into, and provide grants towards individuals suffering the consequences of high activity Asperger's Syndrome. These individuals are extraordinarily able but their Asperger's symptoms are usually not recognized early enough in their lives, which frequently end in suicide.
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Jackalgirl said:
Have you ever read Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon"? Alan Turing appears as a character in there, and in fact explains the workings of the Enigma machine (using a bicycle analogy) to one of the main characters in such a way that even I understood it. Good stuff.

(I'm going to have to go find a copy of this movie and watch it start to finish. It looks cool and I love Derek Jacobi.)
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I loved Cryptonomicon - I have a copy a few feet away. By the way, one of my favorite Stephenson books is The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer . Subversive as hell.

Amazon has some VHS copies of Breaking the Code available:

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Code-Derek-Jacobi/dp/6304361092

Another excerpt from Breaking the Code was included in the wonderful public television series The Machine That Changed the World, put out by WGBH in Boston. I don't know where to get this these days - I taped it off of TV - but it is one of the best series I've ever seen. The first hour includes a lot of pictures and video footage regarding the history of computing. The clip with Derek Jacobi shows him portraying Alan Turing talking to a group of children - a total delight, and his stutter is utterly out of control.

Some links related to The Machine That Changed the World:

http://www.computinghistorymuseum.org/teaching/videos.htm

An outline of the series:

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/TMTCTW.html
 
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Complexity, thanks to your past references I read both "The Code Book" by Singh and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (author's name escapes me). Turing was a man before his time and surely one of the greatest brains of the 20th century.
 
Thank you Complexity, I didn't know this film existed, perhaps the BBC will broadcast it again, it must be higher quality than a lot of their present output.

The imdb link surprised me with a comment that the Apple logo of a bitten apple was a tribute to Turing, alas it turns out to be an urban myth.

There is an excellent biography of Turing, 'Alan Turing, the enigma', by Andrew Hodges for anyone interested.
 
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Acleron said:
Thank you Complexity, I didn't know this film existed, perhaps the BBC will broadcast it again, it must be higher quality than a lot of their present output.

The imdb link surprised me with a comment that the Apple logo of a bitten apple was a tribute to Turing, alas it turns out to be an urban myth.

There is an excellent biography of Turing, 'Alan Turing, the enigma', by Andrew Hodges for anyone interested.
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I'll second the recommendation of Hodges' biography of Turing. It deals quite well with the whole man.
 
Complexity said:
... He killed himself in 1954 by biting into an apple poisoned with cyanide. It is suggested in the documentary by some that his death was accidental or murder, but sources I've read suggest that the manner of his death suggests it was suicide.

Kurt Goedel, Albert Einstein, and Alan Turing all became enamored of Disney's film Sleeping Beauty (I can't remember which of them introduced it to the others). It is thought that the gesture of biting into a poisoned apple was inspired by that film. ...
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Don't you mean Snow White, Complexity?

I agree his death was likely suicide. And certainly tragic. Turing, a hero in the war against Nazism, a decade later a casualty of the moral gestapo.

He's also remembered of course for several papers on computers and AI. This one for example, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, a model of simplicity and clarity, should be required reading for all academics. (Wish I could think and write and like that.)

The fascination Turing, Godel, and Einstein had with Snow White: I wonder if it was with the beauty of the animation, story themes, the fairy tale innocence, music? All that, maybe. It made me think of L. Wittgenstein and his addiction to Carmen Miranda movies. :)
 
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Brilliant! Jacobi is one of my favorite actors. His BBC perfromance of Cyrano de Bergerac blew Fererr's and Depardieu's right out of the water.
 
Mark A. Siefert said:
Brilliant! Jacobi is one of my favorite actors. His BBC perfromance of Cyrano de Bergerac blew Fererr's and Depardieu's right out of the water.
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Every Derek Jacobi fan should run, not walk, and watch him star in the Brother Cadfael series, in which he plays a medieval mystery-solving monk. There are 13 episodes.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/Asin/B00068RYZU/interactiveda555-20

From a review by Robert Shephard:

"One evening I turned on my TV and found myself staring, enraptured, at the sight of a monk blundering his way through a snowstorm, accompanied by hauntingly beautiful choral music. Thus was I introduced to "The Virgin in the Ice" on the PBS show "Mystery!". Over the next few weeks I saw as many other Cadfael episodes as I could find, and periodically caught them again as they came and went. One nifty feature "Mystery!" included was Diana Riggs providing some historical background to 12th century England, which is when the Cadfael series is set.

I soon learned that the series is based on a set of twenty novels, plus one book of short stories, written by Ellis Peters. These span the years 1137 through 1145; they chronicle a Welshman named Cadfael, who fought in the Crusades and then retired to the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in Shrewsbury, to become a monk. His vast trove of lore, built up during his travels in the Holy Land, serves him quite well as he is called upon to solve various murders throughout the years. His extensive knowledge of herbs puts him in good stead, as it allows him to leave the confines of the monastery frequently on errands as a healer. He comes to know the town folk quite well; this gives him plenty of willing helpers. He has the knack of prying information out of people who would never dream of divulging it to the sheriff, and more than once he courageously harbors fugitives wrongly hunted by the Law. His many years in the world give him great insight into the darkness which lurks in the souls of men, and, sometimes, even women."
 
I wish I could get Youtube here . . . this sounds very interesting. What a shame Turing lived in thise times.
 
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