Repatriated material from Sherborne School’s Alan Turing archive
The following items from Sherborne School’s Alan Turing archive were formally returned to the School by HSI Special Agent Greg Wertsch and DOJ AUSA Laura Hurd during a repatriation ceremony held on 22 August 2023:
A transcript made by Mrs Ethel Sara Turing of a postcard written to her by Alan on 5 November 1924. Alan wrote the postcard from Hazelhurst Prep School at Frant, Sussex, where he was a pupil from January 1922 to March 1926. He was by then a keen chess player and determined to hold a chess tournament at the school. (Sherborne School Archives)
Alan Turing’s school report from Hazelhurst Prep School for the half term ending December 1924, which reveals he was top of the French set, which may have been because his parents were then living at Dinard in France. (Sherborne School Archives)
Alan Turing’s first school report from Sherborne School in summer term 1926. His housemaster Geoffrey O’Hanlon described him as ‘Original: a very interesting character’, to which Headmaster Nowell Smith added ‘A very satisfactory start’. (Sherborne School Archives)
Alan Turing’s school report for the end of his first term at Sherborne School in summer term 1926. His housemaster Geoffrey O’Hanlon summed up Alan’s first term saying ‘Quite a good start. He appears self-contained & is apt to be solitary. This is not due to moroseness: but simply I think to a shy disposition.’ (Sherborne School Archives)
Alan Turing’s school report for Michaelmas term 1927, when he came out top of the Maths set. However, he was bottom of the set for English subjects, where the teacher had caught him doing algebra during a Divinity lesson! (Sherborne School Archives)
Photostat copy of Alan Turing’s précis of Albert Einstein’s ‘Theory of Relativity’. Prepared by Alan when aged 15½ for his mother, c.1927. The original document is held in the Turing Archive at King’s College Archive Centre, Cambridge, ref. AMT/K/2. (Sherborne School Archives)
Alan Turing’s school report for Lent term 1931. The previous December 1930 Alan had been elected to a scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge, and was now busy preparing for his Higher Certificate, but also finding time to play rugby for his House. (Sherborne School Archives)
Alan Turing’s final school report on leaving Sherborne School. The Headmaster Charles Boughey wrote of him ‘A gifted and distinguished boy, whose future career we shall watch with much interest. I have found him pleasant and friendly and I believe that he has justified his appointment as a School Prefect.’ (Sherborne School Archives)
Passport photograph of Alan Turing, taken in 1936 when he was aged 24 and preparing to transfer from Cambridge University to Princeton to continue his research. (Sherborne School Archives)
Alan Turing spent two years as a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University and on 21 June 1938 was awarded a Ph.D. for his thesis on ‘Systems of Logic based on Ordinals’. (Sherborne School Archives)
In 1946, Alan Turing was awarded the Order of the British Empire insignia of the Fourth Class (OBE) for secret war service 1939-1945 in the Foreign Office. With the OBE is a card of instruction as to wearing insignia, on which Alan’s mother has written ‘done’. Alan apparently kept his OBE in a tin box along with screws, nails, nuts and bolts! (Sherborne School Archives)
Due to the illness of King George VI, Alan did not go to Buckingham Palace to receive his OBE, instead it arrived by post with a letter from the King regretting that he was unable to present Alan with his OBE in person, c.1946. (Sherborne School Archives)
A photograph of Alan Turing with the Universal Computing Machine at Manchester University. Alan was appointed assistant director of the Manchester Computing Laboratory in 1948, where he carried out pioneering work in the field now known as ‘program verification’. In 1950 he published ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ in which he described what is now known as the ‘Turing test’. He also wrote the first programmers’ handbook for the Manchester Electronic Computer. (Sherborne School Archives)
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