Alan Turing & Bletchley Park

Warfare

History Hit

History

4.5 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alan Turing: pioneering mathematician, computer scientist, codebreaker. He played a crucial role in decrypting Nazi messages during the Second World War, turning the tide of the conflict, and is considered the father of modern computer science. Yet he died in 1954 aged 42, chemically castrated, and a criminal for his sexuality.

In this episode, host James Patton Rogers is joined by Dr Sue Black OBE to explore the groundbreaking achievements of both Alan Turing and Bletchley Park.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Alan Turing is renowned the world over as a British mathematician and
0:05.2	cryptography who broke the Enigma code. His advancements through his
0:09.2	Bond machine was so important that they helped save millions of lives by hastening Allied victory in the Second
0:15.2	World War. He is simply put a national hero, a pioneer who even has his face on the 50-pound note.
0:21.7	But while Alan is famous for breaking the Enigma Code,
0:24.6	his life, his career, and the circumstances
0:27.0	around his untimely death at the age of just 41
0:31.0	have been more difficult to decipher.
0:33.0	I'm your host James Patton Rogers, this is warfare,
0:36.0	and today's episode is dedicated to the life and work of Alan Turing.
0:40.0	To help us understand his personal history, his exact wartime role, his mistreatment
0:45.3	and discrimination by the British legal system, the controversies around his death and his
0:50.5	lasting legacies in computation and AI,
0:54.2	I've invited Professor Sue Black OBE onto the podcast.
0:58.2	Sue is an award-winning computer scientist
1:00.6	well known for founding the high profile campaign to save Bletchley Park
1:05.0	the secret wartime home of Alan and British code-breaking. In fact you could say without
1:10.3	Sue and her dedicated team Bletlexley Park might not exist today.
1:15.2	And so it's through her decades of dedicated work on this history that we get to obtain
1:19.8	more insight into a truly groundbreaking pioneer.
1:24.0	Hi Sue, welcome to warfare.
1:30.0	How you doing today?
	...

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