4 ms·

"Turing committed suicide in 1954, by eating a cyanide-laced apple, although the circumstances of his death were ambiguous enough (deliberately) so that his mot

by 542458 12y ago

"Turing committed suicide in 1954, by eating a cyanide-laced apple, although the circumstances of his death were ambiguous enough (deliberately) so that his mother could maintain, for her own sake, that it was an accident." I feel that this is an unfair statement. There are lots of reasons to believe Turning's death wasn't suicide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death I also think that Fermat deserves an honourable mention for particularly poor timing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem

serf 12y ago
since age doesn't seem to be a concern, how about Paul Erdos having a heart attack (and later dying) at a math convention?
cbd1984 12y ago
Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and was hardly inactive in that period. Had he even thought he actually had a proof, he would have published it, and we would all know it was wrong. A far more likely scenario is that he had a false proof, discovered he had a false proof at some point after he made his marginal note, and didn't bother to publish the fact he had made a fool of himself in some obscure marginalia. The only mystery surrounding Fermat's understanding of his own "Last Theorem" is precisely which false proof he most likely had.
- cperciva 12y ago
  Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and was hardly inactive in that period. Indeed, just to clarify: The reason it is called his "Last" theorem is that it was the last of his many claims to have been neither proven nor refuted; nothing to do with when he made the claim.
Lazare 12y ago
I was going to make the same point. It could well have been a suicide, but the evidence is at best circumstantial, and there's fairly suggestive evidence pointing at it being accidental. I don't think it's controversial to say that no modern inquest would render a verdict of suicide given the very limited evidence that had been gathered. (I personally think his death was an accident; probably the result if his experiments using potassium cyanide to dissolve gold to electroplate spoons. He was famously clumsy, there's evidence that the room he was using for experiments smelled of cyanide, and the autopsy found evidence more consistent with poisoning from inhalation than ingestion. And I've never found the suggestion that Turing staged his suicide to look like an accident credible; if he'd actually tried I imagine he could have done a vastly better job.)
- tedunangst 12y ago
  Turing's suicide is an important part of the argument that the government's homophobia drove him to commit suicide.

by 542458 12y ago

serf 12y ago

since age doesn't seem to be a concern, how about Paul Erdos having a heart attack (and later dying) at a math convention?

cbd1984 12y ago

Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and was hardly inactive in that period. Had he even thought he actually had a proof, he would have published it, and we would all know it was wrong. A far more likely scenario is that he had a false proof, discovered he had a false proof at some point after he made his marginal note, and didn't bother to publish the fact he had made a fool of himself in some obscure marginalia. The only mystery surrounding Fermat's understanding of his own "Last Theorem" is precisely which false proof he most likely had.

cperciva 12y ago
Fermat lived almost three decades after he proposed his "Last Theorem" and was hardly inactive in that period. Indeed, just to clarify: The reason it is called his "Last" theorem is that it was the last of his many claims to have been neither proven nor refuted; nothing to do with when he made the claim.

Lazare 12y ago

I was going to make the same point. It could well have been a suicide, but the evidence is at best circumstantial, and there's fairly suggestive evidence pointing at it being accidental. I don't think it's controversial to say that no modern inquest would render a verdict of suicide given the very limited evidence that had been gathered. (I personally think his death was an accident; probably the result if his experiments using potassium cyanide to dissolve gold to electroplate spoons. He was famously clumsy, there's evidence that the room he was using for experiments smelled of cyanide, and the autopsy found evidence more consistent with poisoning from inhalation than ingestion. And I've never found the suggestion that Turing staged his suicide to look like an accident credible; if he'd actually tried I imagine he could have done a vastly better job.)

tedunangst 12y ago
Turing's suicide is an important part of the argument that the government's homophobia drove him to commit suicide.