azdak

tree_and_leaf mentioned going to Bletchley Park, which reminded me of this sketch of Alan Turing, done when he was a nipper at prep school. What makes it so particularly touching is that at the end of his life, when he'd been forbidden to work on his Automatic Computing Engine because he was deemed a security risk, Turing wrote papers on plant morphogenesis.





And here are extracts from two of his school reports:

English tutor at Sherborne: "I can forgive his writing, though it is the worst I have ever seen, and I try to view tolerantly his unswerving inexactitude and slipshod, dirty, work, inconsistent though such inexactitude is in a utilitarian; but I cannot forgive the stupidity of his attitude towards sane discussion on the New Testament." Bottom of the class.

Headmaster at Sherborne: 'the sort of boy who is bound to be a problem for any school or community.'