The Turing family is of Norman extraction and the family tree goes back to 1316 AD, the family motto being Fortuna audentes Juvat. Having arrived in Scotland the members settled in Angus in a barony of that name, whence they removed to Aberdeenshire early in the fourteenth century and came into possession of Foveran, which remained the family seat until recent times. The name was variously spelled Turyne, Thuring, Turin, Turing. William Turin received the honour of knighthood from James VI of Scotland (James I of England) and thereafter Sir William added the final “g” to the name.

John Turing of Foveran was created a baronet by Charles I in 1639 for loyal service, and was at the battle of Worcester; but his loyalty cost him the loss of lands which had been in the family for 300 years. Records show Turings holding positions of trust and responsibility in the County of Aberdeen.

By the eighteenth century some Turings were venturing further a field. Thus Sir Robert Turing (Bart.), born in 1744, was a doctor and amassed a considerable fortune in the East Indies and then retired to Banff in Scotland where he made himself very useful and popular. One kinsman in the Honourable East India Company took part in the defence of Seringapatam. Others in the nineteenth century lived in Holland; two, father and son, were successive British Consuls in Rotterdam. Some of their descendants have now become domiciled in Holland. Alan's great grandfather, presumably through this Dutch connection, had some occupation in Batavia, maybe in some shipping concern.

This book contains almost all the essential material for the biography of a very remarkable man, who died tragically in June, 1954, in the prime of his life and in the middle of research which may still prove to be even more original and important than the finished work which had brought him so much honour and fame. Alan Turing's mother, who has assembled and written this record of his childhood and his mature achievements, believes that his death was accidental. The explanation of suicide will never satisfy those who were in close touch with Alan during the last months and days of his life, however much the available evidence may point to it, and in the future the possibility of accident will be considered by those in a better position perhaps to decide the truth. But even if his death was not chosen by him, he was a very strange man, one who never fitted in anywhere quite successfully. His scattered efforts to appear at home in the upper middle class circles into which he was born stand out as particularly unsuccessful. He did adopt a few conventions, apparently at random, but he discarded the majority of their ways and ideas without hesitation or apology. Unfortunately the ways of the academic world which might have proved his refuge, puzzled and bored him; and in return that world sometimes accepted him wholeheartedly (I remember ShaunWylie's saying “He was a lovely man: never a dull moment”) but often felt puzzled by his remoteness.

Alan's house had a room from which the bathroom had been sliced, leaving a space – the “nightmare room” as he called it – useless for domestic purposes. This he eventually turned into a laboratory where he spent many happy hours carrying out experiments. According to some of his friends these were often of an unnerving character. On one occasion Dr. Gandy refused to take part in one such experiment in a laboratory alive with electrical equipment, though he was prepared to pursue it in the kitchen. It only goes to show Alan's readiness to take chances when possessed by some absorbing idea. One who knew him well wrote to me that he was like a child when experimenting, not only taking in the observed result mentally but testing it with his fingers. He adds: “When we worked together on some electrical contraption he several times got high-voltage shocks by sheer carelessness.” One experiment that he carried out to his own great satisfaction was the gold-plating of the bowl of an egg-spoon: he used his grandfather's gold turnip-watch for the gold and, presumably, potassium cyanide, hence the presence of the latter in solid form in a drawer in his spare room.

Dr. Robin Gandy has given a full account of their joint activities over the week-end a few days before Alan's death. They were busy with the preparation of a non-poisonous weed-killer and sink-cleaner. “There was nothing sinister about these experiments, which were just an example of Alan's liking to make things himself.”

Sara Turing, a woman in her seventies mourning the death of Alan, her younger son, a man that she failed to understand on so many levels, wrote this remarkable biographical essay. She carefully pieced together his school reports, copies of his publications, and comments on his achievements by experts. But Alan Turing was a thoroughly unconventional man, whose method of dealing with life's situations was to think everything through from first principles, ignoring social expectations. And she was trying to fit him into a framework that reveals more about her and her social situation than it does about him. Alan's older brother John trying to fill in the gaps he saw in his mother's account, also ends up revealing a good deal about his own attitudes.In these few pages I will discuss some of the questions that may occur to readers of these documents.

Alan Turing's War

In 1940, after France had been defeated, Britain fought on mainly alone. The merchant shipping on which the island was dependent was being sunk by German submarines at a rate that threatened to force the UK to yield. The radio communications between the submarines and their base concerning their operational plans were being picked up in Britain. If these plans were known, attacks could be mounted against the submarines. Merchant ships could adjust their routes so as not to go where they would encounter enemy submarines. But of course the data was encrypted.

Alan was broad, strongly built and tall, with a square, determined jaw and unruly brown hair. His deep-set, clear blue eyes were his most remarkable feature. The short, slightly retroussé nose and humorous lines of his mouth gave him a youthful – sometimes a childlike – appearance. So much so that in his late thirties he was still at times mistaken for an undergraduate; hence occasional attempts were made to “prog” him.

In dress and habits he tended to be slovenly. His hair was usually too long, with an overhanging lock which he would toss back with a jerk of his head. The first thing to be done when he came home was to send him to have his hair cut. When he did take the trouble to comb it, five minutes later he would run his fingers through it so that once more it would be standing on end. At King's, for a time he took more trouble with his clothes and even subdued his hair. But when the war came he was seldom at home, clothing and sartorial advice were both rationed, and he relapsed into the old ways. In his last years there was again some slight improvement and he used to object to complaints about his clothes. The real trouble, perhaps, was not so much the clothes that he wore as the way in which he wore them.

The General Strike of 1926 broke out as Alan's first term started. He dearly loved a bit of adventure and so was delighted with the opportunity the strike gave of a novel mode of arrival at school – a new school at that. Landing at mid-day at Southampton from France, he sent a telegram to his housemaster, Mr. Geoffrey O'Hanlon, promising to report next day. Then he disposed of his trunk, and set out armed with a map to bicycle to the school. When he hopefully suggested the possibility of bicycling, I insisted that he should not attempt the whole sixty miles in one day, thinking he might be ruthlessly made to attend early school next day. He spent the night at Blandford at the Crown Hotel, where he seems to have caused some diversion, for the whole staff turned out next morning to see him on his way. His bill for dinner, bed and breakfast was purely nominal – six shillings. This unusual way of arrival won him some notoriety and was even reported in the local press. His enterprise stood him in good stead a year or two later; when progress was at a low ebb his housemaster, seeking some redeeming feature remarked: “Well, after all he did bicycle here.”

Alan's first letter from Westcott House, Sherborne, informs us that “Mr. O'Hanlon is very nice” and indeed he proved to be the perfect housemaster, towhomwe owe anundying debt of gratitude.

The aim of this book is to trace from early days the development of a mathematician and scientist of great originality and to record details from which a selection may be made by a future biographer. Owing to the enforced silence regarding my son's activities in the Foreign Office during the Second World War, there is, except for some few anecdotes, a regrettable gap of six years in the narrative. The book is divided into two parts. The former and major part is mainly biographical but contains sufficient scientific material to indicate the scope and depth of my son's research. The second part affords more technical particulars which might prove wearisome to the general reader: but these barely touch the fringe of his work on Computing Machines and Morphogenesis. His writings on these and other subjects, together with a posthumous paper on Morphogenesis, prepared by Dr. N.E. Hoskin and Dr. B. Richards, can be studied in the volume of his collected works, which is to be published by the North-Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam. I am indebted to many of my son's friends – too numerous to name – for their recollections. Here I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to various American mathematicians and scientists for their particularly courteous interest and co-operation. For their scrutiny of my typescript and valuable suggestions and advice, my special thanks go to Professor M.H.A. Newman, F.R.S., Mrs. Newman (Lyn Irvine), Mr. Geoffrey O'Hanlon and to Mr. Nowell Smith, who also read the proofs.

In this chapter we take a broad view of the social psychology of intergroup relations and apply it to the internet. We start by addressing two popular propositions about the internet. The first of these is that the internet is a safe haven for racists who, using the cover of anonymity, engage in hostile flaming of members of other communities. We can call this first proposition the anonymous cyberhate view of the internet. The second popular proposition is the idea that the internet is a hotbed of social activism where people develop plans to change the world using a device that spans continental boundaries. We call this second proposition the global activist view of the internet.

Let us be clear that there is some truth to both propositions and it is easy to find evidence for both of them. Our contention, however, is that both of the propositions are gross oversimplifications that tend to lead commentators and observers to misunderstand the dynamics present in this medium.

No doubt, social interactions supported by modern technologies have become an important part of our personal, professional, and political lives. At least since the last decade social psychologists have become interested in studying interactions that are mediated by modern technologies such as the internet. Research topics have focused on how computer-mediated interactions differ from traditional face-to-face interactions. One aspect that has drawn a lot of attention is that computer-mediated interactions have greater potential for anonymity. As a consequence, many studies have focused on the effects of whether or not the actor is identifiable to the people she is interacting with, referencing the SIDE model (Spears et al., 1990, 2001). SIDE stands for Social Identity De-individuation Effects. The model proposes that social identity moderates the effects of anonymity. It proposes that deindividuation can accentuate social influence when one identifies strongly with an online group but reduce social influence in the absence of strong identity.

When studying social interactions that are supported by new technologies, there is an inclination to start with the premise that social behavior is in some or all ways fundamentally different as a result of the technology. A notable exception is the research on the SIDE model, which started with the position that deindividuation and social identity have been studied in social psychology at least over the last three decades (Diener, 1977, 1979), and that we could learn from applying what we know from these research traditions to advance our understanding of the role of anonymity in computer-mediated interactions.