Attic Discovery turns out to be 1930s Origins Of Computer Science by Alan Turing

Careful inspection by Rare Book Auctions – the firm handling the sale – revealed the archive had originally been gifted to Alan Turing’s friend and fellow mathematician Norman Routledge by Turing’s mother Ethel.

The papers, known as “offprints”, were produced in very small numbers and distributed within academia, making them incredibly scarce survivors that rarely ever appear on the market. Historically, the exchange of offprints has been a method of correspondence between scholars. They are prized by collectors as representing the first separate edition of an important work.

The collection includes Turing’s PhD dissertation from 1938-39, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals. It is signed by Turing, having been his personal copy. This paper alone has been valued by the auction house at £40,000 to £60,000.

Also featured is On Computable Numbers, 1936-37, which introduced the world to the idea of a ‘universal computing machine’, which, despite the model’s simplicity, is capable of implementing any computer algorithm, and has been described as the first programming manual of the computer age. This too carries a guide price of £40,000 to £60,000.

Alan Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science. He was one of the famous Codebreakers at Bletchley Park who played a vital role in cracking the Enigma code, which was crucial to the Allied victory in World War Two. On 31 March 1952, Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts and given hormone treatment – a procedure commonly referred to as “chemical castration” – as an alternative to prison. He died on 7 June 1954, aged 41, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as suicide, but the evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning.

Shortly before pleading guilty, Turing sent a poignant letter to Norman Routledge – the original owner of the papers being sold. The letter, known as “Yours in distress”, was read aloud by Routledge when he appeared in “The Strange Life and Death of Dr Turing” on BBC’s Horizon in 1992. It has since been read by Benedict Cumberbatch who played Turing in the 2014 American thriller film The Imitation Game. Routledge presented the original letter to King’s College Cambridge where it now resides in The Turing Archive, but he kept the collection of Turing’s offprints, as well as letters from novelist E. M. Forster, which were eventually rescued by his nieces and nephews.

One of the nieces explained the discovery. “Following his retirement from Eton College, Norman bought and lived in a house in Bermondsey. When he died in 2013, two of his sisters had the unenviable task of sorting through and emptying the contents. There were lots of personal papers which one sister carted away and stored in her loft. The papers lay dormant until she moved into a care home almost a decade later. Her daughters came across the papers and considered shredding everything. Fortunately, they checked with Norman’s nieces and nephews because he’d always been a presence in our lives.

“Norman was an amazing man who showed genuine interest in everyone he came into contact with. His family were very important to him. He kept in regular contact and was interested in what each one was doing.

“We finally had an opportunity to see Norman’s papers when the family hosted a ‘Routledge Reunion’ weekend in November 2024. The papers were brought along in a carrier bag. One cousin felt the Turing and Forster papers might be of interest to collectors. After taking them home for a closer look, she decided to attend a local valuation day hosted by Hansons Auctioneers who consigned them for research with their specialist saleroom, Rare Book Auctions. We were bowled over by the valuations and level of enthusiasm.”

Jim Spencer, director of Rare Book Auctions, described the collection as “the most important archive I’ve ever handled.”

“Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I was about to find in that carrier bag.”

“These seemingly plain papers – perfectly preserved in the muted colours of their unadorned, academic wrappers – represent the foundations of computer science and modern digital computing.

“Literature has always been my forte, not mathematics, so the past few months of intensively researching and cataloguing these papers has left me feeling that Alan Turing was superhuman. For me, it’s like studying the language of another planet, something composed by an ultra-intelligent civilisation.

“At the same time, I keep thinking of the tragic end to Turing’s life, precisely because he was treated as alien – charged as a criminal, barred from GCHQ, banned from the United States, and forced to undergo ‘chemical castration’ – all this despite the invaluable work he’d done at Bletchley Park during the war, and for nothing more than his sexuality. This injustice, and the fact he didn’t survive to see his enormous influence and impact, makes these papers feel so special. It’s at least comforting to know that he lives on through his work. He survives through his legacy.”

The collection also includes The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis. Dating from 1952, it is Turing’s lesser-known masterpiece of mathematical biology, and his last major published work. It has since become a basic model in theoretical biology, describing what have come to be known as ‘Turing patterns’.

Explaining the importance of this paper, Spencer said, “As recently as 2023, a study confirmed Turing’s mathematical model hypothesis as outlined in The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis. In this way the papers are still alive. They’re still relevant and groundbreaking.

“We even have Turing’s first published paper from 1935 – Equivalence of Left and Right Almost Periodicity – which is simply a single sheet of paper.

“And the provenance couldn’t be better. The archive was gifted to Turing’s friend and fellow mathematician Norman Arthur Routledge (1928-2013) by Turing’s mother Ethel – and we have her handwritten letter explaining this.”

In the letter, dated 16 May 1956, Ethel Turing says, “I have to-day sent by registered post 13 of Alan’s off-prints…I don’t know what people in Cambridge thought of the manner of Alan’s death. I am convinced it was accidental as the experiment of coke under electrolysis – which smelt of cyanide had been going on for weeks – I feel sure he got some of this on his fingers & so on to the apple he customarily ate in bed…I have had some requests to write a biography of Alan…I have masses of material because from the time he was about 6 I spotted a winner – despite many detractors at school – and kept many papers about him.”

Spencer said, “This fascinating letter is a golden thread that neatly ties up and seals the authenticity of everything being offered.”

Discussing the difficult job of valuing the material, Spencer said, “The potential value compels us to offer the papers individually. The price is unknown and could run to any amount.

“Anything with a direct connection to Turing is highly desirable and almost impossible to find. These papers were owned by his close friend Norman, having been gifted to him by Turing’s mother. That’s what makes this collection so significant.

“Hardly anything like this appears on the open market, so predicting hammer prices is fortune-telling. There’s an irony in this because Turing believed in fortune-telling, having been told by a fortune-teller in his youth that he would be a genius. He apparently visited a fortune-teller at Blackpool Pleasure Beach shortly before his mysterious death.

“Ultimately, the market will speak. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire this material. I suspect interest will be strong in Silicon Valley – where Turing’s influence shines brightly – but it would be lovely to see material acquired by institutions who could share things with the public.”

The sale will additionally include a collection of signed letters from E. M. Forster – another of Norman’s close friends – as well as Norman’s unpublished memoirs, in which he talks about Turing and Forster. In the memoirs, Routledge talks humorously and candidly about his time at Eton and King’s College Cambridge, his personal interests, friendships, and sexuality.

Auction:

The Alan Turing Papers: The Collection of Norman Routledge (1928-2013) will be held on 17th June 2025 by Rare Book Auctions, Lichfield. Bidding will be available worldwide. For more information, please visit www.rarebookauctions.co.uk or contact Jim Spencer: jim@rarebookauctions.co.uk