Page "Alan Turing" Paragraph 4

Turing was conceived at Chhatrapur, Orissa, in British India.

His father, Julius Mathison Turing ( 1873 – 1947 ), was a member of an old aristocratic family of Scottish descent who worked for the Indian Civil Service ( the ICS ).

Julius's wife, Alan's mother, was Ethel Sara ( née Stoney ; 1881 – 1976 ), daughter of Edward Waller Stoney, chief engineer of the Madras Railways.

The Stoneys were a Protestant Anglo-Irish gentry family from both County Tipperary and County Longford, while Ethel herself had spent much of her childhood in County Clare.

Julius's work with the ICS brought the family to British India, where his grandfather had been a general in the Bengal Army.

However, both Julius and Ethel wanted their children to be brought up in England, so they moved to Maida Vale, London, where Turing was born on 23 June 1912, as recorded by a blue plaque on the outside of the house of his birth, later the Colonnade Hotel.

He had an elder brother, John ( the father of Sir John Dermot Turing, 12th Baronet of the Turing Baronets ).

His father's civil service commission was still active, and during Turing's childhood years his parents travelled between Hastings in England and India, leaving their two sons to stay with a retired Army couple.

Very early in life, Turing showed signs of the genius he was later to display prominently .< ref name = toolbox >