Alan Turing OBE, PhD, FRS (1912-1954)

alan-turing-at-sherborne-school-july-1926
Alan Turing at Sherborne School, 1926. (Sherborne School Archives)

Mathematician, computer scientist, theoretical biologist, and Second World War codebreaker.

Alan Turing attended Sherborne School from May 1926 to July 1931, during which time he boarded at Westcott House.

He arrived for his first day at Sherborne School by bicycle when, because no trains were running due to a rail strike, he cycled the 65 miles (104 km) from Southampton to Sherborne.

Alan was not a great team game player at Sherborne, preferring individual sports such as golf and long-distance running, although he did play rugby for his house.

On 7 November 1927 Alan was confirmed in the School chapel.

In Michaelmas term 1930 Alan was made a School Prefect and joined The Duffers society to whom he gave a paper entitled ‘Other Worlds’.

During his time at Sherborne School, Alan won many prizes including the Kirby Mathematics Prize for the Lower School (1926), the Lyon Prize for Examination (1927), the Plumptre Mathematical Prize for the Middle School (1928), the Digby Prize for Mathematics and Science (1930, 1931), the Christopher Morcom Prize for Natural Science (1930, 1931), and the King’s Medal for Mathematics (1931). When he left Sherborne in 1931 he was awarded the Westcott House Goodman Scholarship.

Alan remained a proud Shirburnian all his life, joining the Old Shirburnian Society in 1931 and remaining a member until his death in 1954. In 1945 he subscribed to an appeal to raise funds to build a memorial at Sherborne to the 242 Old Shirburnians who had died in the Second World War. Alan returned to Sherborne on numerous occasions to visit his former teachers and to attend house suppers, making his last visit on 9 March 1953 to give a talk about ‘The Electronic Brain’ to a meeting of the Alchemists society.

Between 1965 and 1967, Alan’s mother, Mrs Ethel Sara Turing, donated material to Sherborne School that today forms the core of the School’s Alan Turing Archive, at the same time Mrs Turing also donated material to King’s College, Cambridge which is now held at The Archive Centre.

On 22 August 2023, items from Sherborne School’s Alan Turing archive were formally returned to the School during a repatriation ceremony.

For further information about Sherborne School’s Alan Turing Archive please contact the School Archivist.

Online Resources:

Links:

Further reading:

  • D.B. Eperson, Music and Mathematics (The Book Guild Ltd., Sussex, 2002)
  • Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (London, Vintage Books, 2012)
  • Simon Lavington, A History of Manchester Computers (British Computer Society, 1998)
  • David Leavitt, The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (London: Phoenix, 2006)
  • David Leavitt, The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (London: Phoenix, 2006)
  • Dermot Turing, Prof: Alan Turing Decoded (The History Press, 2015)
  • Dermot Turing, Alan Turing: The Life of a Genius (Pitkin Guide, 2017)
  • Dermot Turing, The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park (Arcturus Publishing Ltd., 2020)
  • Dermot Turing, Reflections of Alan Turing: A Relative Story (The History Press, 2021)
  • Sara Turing, Alan M. Turing. Centenary Edition. (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
  • Hugh Whitemore, Breaking the Code (Samuel French Ltd., 1988)

For further information about the Sherborne School Archives please contact the School Archivist

Return to the School Archives homepage