Papers by WW2 codebreaker Alan Turing sell at auction for £465k

BBC News, Derby

The collection included Alan Turing's PhD dissertation from the 1930s

Papers written by World War Two codebreaker Alan Turing have sold for a "record-breaking" price of £465,400 after they were found in a loft and almost shredded.

The 1930s collection, which included a copy of Turing's PhD dissertation, went under the hammer in Etwall in Derbyshire on Tuesday.

Turing, considered by many as the father of modern computing, played a key role in WW2 in helping to break the German Enigma codes at Bletchley Park.

According to Hansons Auctioneers, one of the papers - On Computable Numbers - sold for "a remarkable" £208,000.

Auctioneer Charles Hanson said he was "astonished" when the documents surfaced during a valuation event in Nottinghamshire.

"To think these precious papers could've been lost to the shredder and now they will go on to educate and inspire generations," he said.

"Turing was a man ahead of his time, and through these pages, he lives on."

The collection was found in the loft of Turing's friend Norman Routledge

The papers were originally gifted to Turing's friend and fellow mathematician Norman Routledge.

After Mr Routledge died in 2013, the documents were found at his home in Bermondsey, London, and taken away by one of his sisters.

One of Mr Routledge's nieces, who has not been named, said they were untouched for years until the sister moved into a care home.

Her daughters found the collection and "considered shredding everything" before they checked with the nieces and nephews.

Jim Spencer, from Rare Books Auctions, said the papers were "the most important" he had handled

According to Hansons, Turing's PhD dissertation and On Computable Numbers are both hailed as foundational works in the field of theoretical computer science.

Lichfield-based Rare Book Auctions, sister company to Hansons, had valued both of the papers at between £40,000 and £60,000.

But the dissertation from 1938 or 1939, called Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, sold for £110,500.

Other top selling lots included Computability and λ-Definability and The World Problem in Semi-Groups with Cancellation, which sold for £26,000 and £28,600 respectively.

Turing's final major work from 1952, called The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis, went for £19,500, while his first published paper from 1935, Equivalence of Left and Right Almost Periodicity, sold for £7,800.

The collection included a number of personal letters to Mr Routledge

In addition to the academic works, the sale featured personal items, including a handwritten letter from Ethel Turing explaining the gift of her son's papers to Mr Routledge.

Jim Spencer, director of Rare Book Auctions, said: "This was the most important archive I've ever handled.

"The papers came within inches of being destroyed, and instead they've captured the world's imagination.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime discovery – not just for collectors, but for the sake of preserving the story of one of the greatest minds in history."

Mr Hanson added that the buyer was "absolutely over the moon" with the purchases.