It wasn’t uncommon to see Turing dressed rather shabbily, with bitten nails and without a tie, he said. “He was very casual in those days, and thought very scruffy.” Had he lived a few decades later, he would have worn t-shirts and jeans every day, Hodges added. “He was a hippie before his time,” Hodges said. He embodied some values of the Hippie movement When one of his running club members asked why he trained so vehemently, he replied, “I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard.” 2. In 1948, his best marathon time was 2 hours 46 minutes 3 seconds - only 11 minutes slower than the Olympic winning time that year. He joined running clubs, becoming a competitive amateur and winning several races. He used to run the 10 miles between the two places where he did most of his work, the National Physical Laboratory and the electronics building on Dollis Hill, beating colleagues who took public transportation to the office. To work it into his day, he often ran to the places he needed to go. Turing had “a bit of a ‘smelly trainers’ aspect” to his personality,” Hodges said. He participated in a few sports, such as rowing, but he loved running.

Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images 1. We spoke with Hodges this week about some things many people don’t know about Turing. Sixty years later, Queen Elizabeth II officially pardoned Turing.Īndrew Hodges, a mathematician at the Mathematical Institute at Oxford University, wrote the biography “Alan Turing: The Enigma”, which inspired the film. He was only 41 years old.Īt the time of his death, the public had no idea what he had contributed to the war effort. Homosexuality was still a crime in Great Britain at the time, and Turing was convicted of “indecency.” He died from eating an apple laced with cyanide. Turing took his own life in 1954, two years after being outed as gay. On the PBS NewsHour tonight, Jeffrey Brown interviews Benedict Cumberbatch about his role as Turing in “The Imitation Game.” His work gave the Allies the edge they needed to win the war in Europe, and led to the creation of the computer. An English mathematician, logician and cryptographer, Alan Turing was responsible for breaking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II.

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