Since I can find no previous mention on Terry, I thought I’d share one of my favourite webcomics. Hark, A Vagrant!, by Canadian Kate Beaton is in many ways to the Humanities what XKCD is to science and engineering (with suitably better illustrations).

In fact, one improvement is that Beaton, a History and Anthropology graduate from Mount Allison University, often accompanies her comics with a blog post explaining the obscure historical references sent up, so while laughing at her witty and hilarious illustrations, you can often learn something, too. Also, in true Terry spirit, she often pens works which deal with the history of science:

So if you’ve got some time after (or while) studying for midterms, why not start from the beginning? Also, post your favourite, if you have one. Here’s one of mine:

It is a shameful story that few know. Alan Turing, known as the father of modern Computer Science, and largely responsible for the Allied victory in World War 2 thanks to his decryption of the Enigma code, was prosecuted by the British government for his homosexuality and forced to undergo chemical castration. This humiliating treatment ultimately led to his suicide at the age of just 42, a humiliating end to a hero who had given more to his country and the world than can possibly be measured.

Now, 55 years later, and in what might be the only recorded case of an Internet petition achieving anything worthwhile, British  Prime Minister Gordon Brown has released a statement on behalf of his government officially apologising for the treatment this great man was forced to endure.

Here is that statement in its entirety:

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

In acknowledgement of the 65th anniversary of D-Day, I thought I’d share a fascinating story from World War 2 which I came across several years ago. WW2 is an immensely important time, not just from the perspective of military or political history, but as an era of social change. Gender equality made big strides, as the need for labour meant that manufacturers could no longer afford to exclude women from the workforce. Advances were also made in racial equality, though not without much resistance.

During World War 2 the US Army was still segregated; black soldiers were not permitted to serve alongside whites by Federal law. This led to the creation of several all-black regiments, one of the most remarkable of which was the 761st Tank Battalion – a volunteer battalion which trained out of Ft. Hood, Texas. I learned about the battalion from fascinating book – “Brothers in Arms“, which chronicles their lengthy training process and the struggle they faced to be permitted to fight for their country.

The unit trained for almost 2 years before they were permitted to enter combat – in contrast the average battalion would train for only 2 or 3 months. Paradoxically, these black American soldiers were permitted fewer rights than the German POWs interred at the same camp. The unit was eventually permitted to enter combat, and distinguished itself in 183 days of continuous operation in the Battle of the Bulge. Despite this distinguished service, the battalion received no recognition of it’s service after the war, until in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter belatedly awarded the unit a Presidential Unit Citation.

I found something incredibly stirring about the struggle of these individuals to be allowed to fight for the protection of a country in which they were second-class citizens.

(As in interesting addendum – the units most famous member was Jackie Robinson, who – after being turfed from the unit and denied the opportunity to fight for his country following his refusal to give up his seat on a bus – went on to challenge and overturn segregation in baseball)

This is a re-hash of a topic I previously posted on my own blog, but I’m hoping the larger audience of Terry might provoke a more… lively discussion than the one spam comment it has so far received…

The occasion was my having just read Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science by David Lindley, a very enjoyable and instructive look into the history and personalities surrounding the development of early Quantum Mechanics which I would recommend to any who, like me, knows less about physics than they would like to. Or if you’re stuck on an airplane with terrible film selection, as was the case.

Something which struck me was that many of the insights the book provided into the personalities and private arguments surrounding the historical events were gleaned from letters which the major players had sent to each other, detailing their thoughts and perspectives on the issues.

This got me thinking: how will future science historians gain similar insights into modern scientists, when the nature of modern communication is so transitive? In a world where email, IP-telephony and instant messaging are the dominant modes of discourse, what will remain as a public record for the documentation of scientific development “as-it-happened”? Few people keep old emails forever, and once they are deleted they are pretty much gone forever (unless future historians will be both remarkably skilled in forensic data recovery, and remarkably lucky). Heck, even writing in the margins of hard-copy books, which has historically provided insight into the reader’s personality, and maddening enigmas to spur development, may soon be a thing of the past.

Interestingly, unlike paper media like letters and books, which are more likely to survive if jealously guarded by their owners and more liable to entropy with use, digital data gains longevity from heavy trafficking. Newsgroup, forum and blog posts are likely to have long shelf-lives with services like WayBackMachine and Google caching, whereas private emails, instant-message and Skype conversations will likely be lost. So there’s an interesting conflict between privacy concerns and public interest. Perhaps Google or Amazon or Facebook storing private data might have long-term practical benefits - despite the backlash such occurances generally produce? Now, I’m not for one second suggesting that I like the idea of multinational corporations trawling my private data in order to subtly sell me things, but I do wonder how future historians will gain insight into the personailities of today’s important developers without some storing of personal information. Perhaps we should be giving greater thought to the preservation of digital data - even if it is private?