Cache of Turing’s work was almost shredded after being discovered in a house clearance in London last year
A cache of Alan Turing’s most important scientific papers have been sold for £465,000 at auction, more than three times their expected sale price, after being saved from the shredder.
It had been estimated that the collection would sell for £150,000 in 13 separate lots but it fetched a total of £465,400 on Tuesday, which is understood to be a record for Turing material.
The treasure trove of some of the wartime codebreaker’s most important work was discovered gathering dust in a loft at a property in Bermondsey, south London. The archive was gifted to Turing’s best friend but it was almost destroyed after being found during a house clearance last November.
The papers were saved at the last minute when their significance was recognised at a family event and they went under the hammer in Etwall, Derbyshire. It included a personally signed copy of his 1938 PhD dissertation, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, which sold for £110,500.
