Alan Turing’s Notebook Sells for $1 Million

On Monday Alan Turing’s long lost notebook was sold at an auction in New York for $1 million.  The British mathematician and World War II code breaker ‘s notebook dates back to the mid-1940s, when Turing was working to break the Nazi Engima code at Britain’s Bletchley Park. 

It is believed that the notebook is the sole extensive Turing autograph manuscript in existence, and gives insight into the man whose work led to the universal computer machine.  It features 56 pages of Turing’s notes on the foundations of mathematical notations and computer science. 

Before the sale, Cassandra Hatton, director of the auction’s history of science and technology department, said she hoped that the notebook can be made available to researchers.  “What I really, really hope for is that a collector buys it and makes it available to an institution, at least loans it for a few years and makes it available to scholars.”

See Jennie Matthew, Key Handwritten Scientific Document by Alan Turing Sells for $1 Million in New York, Art Daily, Apr. 14, 2015.