Alan Turing and the apple

Alan Turing is known in most parts of the world as a ‘father of modern computing’. Most English people associate his name more, perhaps, with code breaking and with bringing World War Two to a close a little earlier than it otherwise might have done. The full story of his life and work is a long and fascinating one.

This statue is located in Sackville Park, Manchester, half way between the old UMIST, where he worked, and Canal Street, Manchester's gay village. He is holding an apple, symbol both of forbidden love and the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The reference to Isaac Newton is unlikely to be coincidental, and it was a cyanide-laced apple that Turing took to end his life in 1954, a time that was anything but friendly to gay people.

On a plaque at his feet is a quote from Bertrand Russell: "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture."

[Manchester, UK]