Campaign fights to save Turing papers for Bletchley Park

A campaign to save for the nation the most complete collection in the world of Alan Turing’s works needs donations urgently.

It is now a race against time with the auction at Christies scheduled for 23 November, where the papers of the famous World War II codebreaker are expected to be sold for between £300,000 and £500,000.

With time running out, the campaign set up by Gareth Halfacree, an independent supporter of the Bletchley Park Trust, has so far only raised just over £12,000.

He said: “They belong in a dedicated museum but Bletchley Park can't afford [them]. As a result, I'm asking for volunteers to dig deep and see to it that these papers not only stay in this country but stay where the public can see them and benefit from them.

"Let's save them from being locked away in the vaults of a private collector.”

Alan Mathison Turing was one of the pre-eminent World War Two codebreakers; a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist who died tragically at the age of just 41, without having received public recognition for his wartime achievements.

Christie's is to auction off the impressive Turing's offprints, including 15 of his 18 published papers. It is thought to be the largest collection in the world and was put together by Professor Max Newman. The fellow Bletchley Park codebreaker, Professor Newman was a friend of Turing, who presented him with the offprints..

If the money needed to buy the collection, which can be viewed online at Christies, can be raised they will go on permanent public display at Bletchley Park.

William Newman, Professor Newman’s son said: “The offprint collection's value derives mainly from its completeness; indeed it may be the most complete collection of Turing's works in the world.

"This has come about because Turing started to give offprints to [my father] before he had published the Computable Numbers paper.

“He subsequently gained a large following, who were interested mainly in his follow-on work. In fact Turing published only 18 papers.”