CODEBREAKER

Alan Turing Suicide Doubted

Academic questions 1954 inquest.

For decades it has been believed that mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing committed suicide. But at a conference Saturday, 100 years after Turing’s birth, Professor Jack Copeland says he will question the 1954 inquest that determined that Turing had committed suicide by eating an apple poisoned with cyanide. Turing felt prosecuted after, in 1952, he became the target of an investigation for “acts of gross indecency” because he had a male lover. Copeland contends that Turing was able to bear these trials with “good humor,” however, and says that the evidence the 41-year-old committed suicide would not hold up in court today.