Enigma of Alan Turing, Bletchley codebreaker, aged 16¾

Monday October 23 2017

Enigma of Alan Turing, Bletchley codebreaker, aged 16¾*
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David Sanderson*

Alan Turing’s mathematical genius was to play a key role in breaking the 
Nazi Enigma code, but his teachers at Sherborne School in Dorset were 
unimpressed

He brought Bayesian statistics and cryptographic genius to Bletchley 
Park and in so doing is credited with having played a big role in ending 
the Second World War.

As a schoolboy, however, his teachers were slow to recognise his talents 
: they thought that although he showed “distinct promise” in 
mathematics, his ideas in physics were “vague” and messily explained.

Alan Turing’s report card from Sherborne School in the Dorset market 
town is to be put on show as part of a new /'Codebreakers and 
Groundbreakers' /exhibition.

Donald Eperson, his mathematics master, thought that his Higher 
Certificate papers showed talent but commented that “he must realise 
that ability to put a neat & tidy solution on paper — intelligible and 
legible — is necessary for a first-rate mathematician”.....


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/enigma-of-alan-turing-bletchley-codebreaker-aged-16-xctdcgh5m

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-41696274

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/23/young-alan-turing-told-science-teacher-would-never-amount-anything/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/family/alan-turings-shows-damning-school-report-no-bar-staggering-success/

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/23/alan-turing-school-report-fitzwilliam-museum-cambridge

http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/enigma-codebreaker-alan-turing-two-jewish-refugees/

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The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Codebreakers and Groundbreakers
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A pioneering and interdisciplinary exhibition, "Codebreakers and
Groundbreakers" will bring together, for the first time, the remarkable
intellectual achievements and parallel narratives of two groups of
‘codebreakers’ working at the same time, but independently: those
involved in breaking the Second World War codes and those who deciphered
   the ancient script of Linear B – Europe’s earliest comprehensible
writing system....


http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/calendar/whatson/codebreakers-and-groundbreakers

http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/calendar/whatson/curators%E2%80%99-introduction-codebreakers-and-groundbreakers