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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 point
by 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 agoTuring's suicide is an important part of the argument that the government's homophobia drove him to commit suicide.