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An auction in Etwall, Derbyshire, saw a collection of papers written by World War Two codebreaker Alan Turing sell for a staggering price of £465,400. The documents were discovered in a loft and were nearly destroyed before being saved. Among the collection was Turing’s PhD dissertation from the 1930s, a pivotal piece in the history of modern computing technology.
Considered a pioneer in the field of computing, Turing played a crucial role in breaking the German Enigma codes during WW2 at Bletchley Park. One of the papers from the collection, titled On Computable Numbers, fetched an impressive sum of £208,000 at the auction. Auctioneer Charles Hanson expressed his astonishment at finding the documents during a valuation event in Nottinghamshire.
The papers were originally given to Turing’s friend and fellow mathematician, Norman Routledge, who stored them in his loft. After Routledge’s passing in 2013, the documents were found at his residence in Bermondsey, London, by one of his sisters. It wasn’t until his niece’s daughters stumbled upon the collection that its significance was realized. The nieces and nephews prevented the papers from being shredded, ultimately leading to their sale at the auction.
Experts valued the papers at an estimated £40,000 to £60,000 each, but the final bids far exceeded those figures. Turing’s PhD dissertation, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, fetched £110,500, showcasing the enduring interest and value placed on his groundbreaking work. The auction also featured personal items, such as handwritten letters from Ethel Turing, giving insight into the personal and professional life of the legendary mathematician
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