This page is from Alan Turing's school report card. His math teacher says that "his work shows
distinct promise but he must realize that the ability to put a neat and tidy solution on paper
is necessary for a first-rate mathematician" and his physics teacher says that "in order
to get into Cambridge he will need to show sound knowledge rather than vague ideas."
Now with these vague ideas Turing would go on to crack the Enigma encryption that Germany
used during World War II and helped to end the war. That was featured in the movie all about
Turing called The Imitation Game. Turing was an incredibly talented mathematician and also
one of the first computer scientists. He envisioned computers as the tool
for which we use them today and he gave one of the first lectures to mention the idea of
computer intelligence, the idea from which the field of artificial intelligence would grow.
So hello I'm toby and welcome back to another video where I'm going to be going through
someone's grades. Also a thank you to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring part of this video.
This page of Turing's report card was from 1929 when Turing was about 17 years old and attending
the Sherborne School in England. His french was considered fair and his proses were weak
and his reading was apparently weak as well. His essays showed ideas that
were more grandiose than pointed. It is a common thread throughout Turing's report
cards that he did much better in maths and science than he did in the languages.
A tutor remarks at the end of this page that they are "satisfied and glad that Turing is ready to
come out of his shell." That's not too bad but many of the earlier report cards for Turing
were much more harsh. This particular page was the only original photocopy I could find
but I do have a transcribed version of all of the other years that Turing was at this school
and some of these comments are really tough. You can read through all of
the comments in this document yourself, this is on the Sherborne School website
but i'll read through some of the comments that really stood out to me.
Turing's first year at the school was in 1926 when he was aged 14 and it was said that he "had
a natural bent for science but his work was badly spoiled by extreme untidiness." Now this mention
of untidy or dirty work would become a very common thread through a lot of these comments.
His teachers used words like careless and disappointing
and they even called his lack of interest in french very depressing. These pages are
full of comments saying things like "his work is rather lacking in life
or that he needs to concentrate harder" or even this note saying that "he is not a normal boy."
In mathematics he ranked 10th in his class and the comment says "not very good. He spends a good deal
of time apparently in investigations of advanced mathematics to the neglect of his elementary work.
A sound groundwork is essential in any subject. His work is dirty."
I guess I agree with the sentiment that you need to have some good foundations before you go on
into advanced stuff but man that comment seems really demoralizing for a kid who is obviously
very interested in the subject. Turing was indeed interested in these investigations of advanced
mathematics, when he was aged 15 and a half he wrote a condensed version of Einstein's general
theory of relativity as a gift to his mother and i'll put some pictures up of that document
on the screen for you to have a look at. I think that it's really impressive for someone of his
age to be reading and clearly thinking about some of the subjects and topics in that book.
So I think you can clearly see he was a talented kid who cared for mathematics
but like many students I think he struggled to bring this talent and enthusiasm for science
with him through the conventional education system and some of these comments from his professors
are kind of trying to do their best to really beat that passion out of him.
His history teacher says "I append one
sheet of a recent history paper as it probably stays more eloquently than I can
where his weakness lies." This homework was an essay that Turing wrote and I guess it's
a little messy at the start but by today's standards his handwriting is pretty nice so
yeah i'm not really sure maybe we'd have to have a little read of that essay to truly understand.
He's been at the school for a little while now but is still getting told that he's too
untidy and that there's room for improvement. In science the comment is that "he has
a lot of knowledge but his methods and practical work are at present deplorable. He must learn the
importance of scrupulous cleanliness and neatness and of being able to set his work down on paper."
Now it seems kind of surprising to read these sorts of comments about
Turing as an experimentalist because I mean even if you've seen the movie The Imitation Game,
the machines that he dreamt up and worked on were you know very neat made of many moving parts
and required a brain that could see how everything fit together very neatly and you
know in a very beautiful way for the mathematics to work. So I don't know if Turing improved or
if you know his his talents just weren't able to shine while he was at school.
There's kind of a funny comment down here on the house report saying that "no doubt he is
very aggravating and he should know by now that I don't care to find him boiling heaven knows what
witches brew by the aid of two guttering candles on a naked wooden window sill."
I think this is referring to Turing performing one of many experiments outside of class. You
see this was a boarding school and Turing loved to have his own little experiments. Not sure
what he was concocting here but yeah it sounds maybe like it was even a chemistry experiment.
By 1928 there were still plenty of struggles, Turing ranked third in his class for mathematics
although the comment says that he was easily the best mathematician in the set
so really he deserved to come first.
"His position is caused (again) by untidiness and carelessness."
His english teacher says that "he should read more" and that's interesting because
there are also the library records of Turing available on the school's website and you
can see that whilst he got out a lot of books on things like math and science he only ever got out
three fiction books and two of those were part of the Alice in Wonderland series by Lewis Carroll.
And the reason he got out those books was because one of his math teachers had encouraged him to
since the author of Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll was himself a mathematician
and there was a lot of math sprinkled into those stories.
There are sentences like this one from the headmaster saying that "he better
take on the advice of his teachers if he is to achieve any real success"
and that kind of hurts to read because you know Turing's work did go on to be so influential to
mathematics and he definitely by any standard did achieve real success in his field.
By 1930 though things started to look a little bit more positive his physics teacher this time
said that he is "doing much better work". The headmaster says that he seems to be going well
and the house report says that "he wins respect both by brains and character."
The comments on pretty much every subject including the languages
are much more positive, you know we have "steady and intelligent work" from the english teacher
which is you know such a step up from those very harsh comments at the start. They commend
him for working hard and having imagination and interest even in his language subjects.
This is the final page and the final comments are that he is considered pleasant and friendly
and the headmaster has appointed him a school prefect. They wish him
success at Cambridge University for which he had gained a scholarship.
I'm happy that by the end you know all these teachers who had been so harsh
did wish him well and commend him for his intelligence and his hard work.
I don't know how much of that is Turing you know becoming more mature. Maybe he
did decide that he did you know need to be a lot neater to really get his ideas across
and after Cambridge he eventually went on to get a PhD in number theory from Princeton University.
As a fun little bonus here are some pictures of a number theory book that Turing owned and annotated
and this book was written by John Littlewood who you may remember from my previous videos about the
Ramanujan and Hardy sort of collaboration because Littlewood was also involved in that story too.
So a little bit of you know crossing over between these two stories.
Another little fun fact is that Alan Turing's middle name was
Mathison and I kind of find that fitting seeing as it sounds like the son of math
although what would be more fitting would to call Turing the father of computer science.
Now we can't end on that happy note though because Turing's life did have a really tragic end.
In 1952 he was arrested when being gay was considered a criminal offence.
He chose to be chemically castrated instead of going to prison and he died two years
later at the age of 42. He took a bite of an apple which he had laced with cyanide,
perhaps a result of the depressing circumstances in which he found himself.
In 2009 the British government issued an apology for the treatment of Alan Turing but it remains
a really sad story and a tragic end for one of our greatest minds, and it remains an example
of how hatred and discrimination can rob the world of wonderful people.
This part of the video is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus.
Much of Alan Turing's work was philosophical in nature.
He devised a test that could evaluate a machine's ability to exhibit intelligence. He wondered
'is there anything about us that is different from a properly programmed machine?'
Today we call this the Turing test and I have explored ideas like this with
the help of a course from The Great Courses Plus called The Great Ideas of Philosophy.
The lectures are presented by Daniel Robinson who had been a member of the Oxford University's
philosophy faculty and there is a lecture about Alan Turing in the forest of wisdom.
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