Bletchley Park Trust secures rare collection

An important and valuable collection of Alan Turing’s work, including his momentous paper On Computable Numbers, has been saved for the nation with the help of over £213,000 worth of funding from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) along with donations by members of the public and Google as well as a private donor.

Alan Turing is best known as being the father of modern computer science and his work at Bletchley Park was fundamental to the victory in the Second World War as he helped break the German Enigma Code.

Dame Jenny Abramsky, chair of the NHMF said, “This is such welcome news. Alan Turing was a true war hero and played an absolutely crucial role during the Second World War. This grant will now ensure that this extremely rare collection of his work stands as a permanent memorial to the man and to all those who paid the ultimate price in service to this nation.”

The collection includes offprints of 15 of Turing’s 18 published works, and is of particular interest and importance as very few pieces of Turing’s work or personal belongings still exist. Most of the war-time records at Bletchley Park were destroyed after the war, while Turing himself kept little of his work and very few personal belongings. The collection is now set to go on display to all visitors at Bletchley Park.