this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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Alan Turing was a fucking hero, and the British legal system drove him to suicide (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by PugJesus@lemmy.world to c/historymemes@lemmy.world
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[โ€“] PugJesus@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Poor storage of laboratory chemicals is the alternative explanation. While plausible, suicide seems more likely to my eyes.

[โ€“] gedhrel@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The story is at least semi-plausible, but Turing also still had friends in the right places (not enough to dig him out of the hole he got himself into with the local plod*) and there was a strong social taboo around suicide.

(* At the time there was good reason to believe that the end of the outlawing of homosexuality was just around the corner, so offering a genuine explanation was not necessarily Turing acting as such a naif as is often portrayed.)