Alan suggested that knowledge and
intelligence in human beings derive from interaction
with the world. Science and sex were the two things
that allowed Turing to jump out of the social system in
which he was trained. Manners, committees,
examinations, interrogations, German codes threatened
his freedom.
A very important step for Alan was when in
1950 he decided to buy his own house. It was a semidetached house in Wilmslow, the middle-class
dormitory town in Cheshire, ten miles to the south of
Manchester. And then another interest of Alan was
developed – the problem of the body. He had always
enjoyed examining plants when on his walks and runs
and now he began a more serious collection of wild
flowers.
The next major step for him was when in the
1951 elections, which took place on 15 March, he
became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Jefferson, himself
a Fellow since 1947, found an excellent description of
Alan as ‘a sort of scientific Shelley’. Alan’s mother was
very proud of the Fellowship. She was one of the few
people who took interest in his doings. After that the
BBC new Third Programme was offering a series of five
talks on computers, one of which was by Alan Turing
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