An all-boys boarding school in the United Kingdom on Tuesday welcomed back a collection of stolen mementos that once belonged to Alan Turing, the famed mathematician known for cracking German codes during World War II.
United States government officials, during a repatriation ceremony at the Sherbourne School in southern England, formally handed back Turing’s 1938 Princeton University Ph.D. diploma in mathematics, an Order of the British Empire medal and a letter from King George VI, among a host of other objects.
The momentous return comes more than five years after U.S. authorities seized the keepsakes from a Colorado woman who claimed Turing as her father. The woman, who even changed her last name to Turing, had no relation to the legendary British codebreaker, but became obsessed with him over the course of her life.
“Few people have had a greater positive impact upon the world than Alan Turing,” said Sherborne headmaster and CEO, Dr. Dominic Luckett, in a statement. “As a school, we are intensely proud of our association with Alan Turing and want to do all we can to preserve and promote his legacy. As part of that, we take very seriously our responsibility to look after those items in our archives which relate to his time at Sherborne School and his subsequent life and work.”
Tuesday’s ceremony capped nearly four decades of bizarre twists and turns for Turing’s memorabilia.
In January 2018, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security received a tip that an individual had offered the University of Colorado Boulder historical artifacts from Turing’s collection.
Julia Mathison Turing, a Conifer resident, told the school that Alan was her relative and wanted to loan the pieces for display. But school officials, during their research, learned that Julia had stolen the objects in 1984 from the Sherbourne School.
Investigators say Julia Turing — formerly Julia Schwinghamer — contacted the British boarding school that year, saying she was…
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