Re:Irony of the Apple (Score 1)

The apple is not just a symbol representing his death by cyanide. According to Andrew Hodges' excellent biography The Enigma of Intelligence, Turing's body was found with a half-eaten apple beside his bed. There were also jars of cyanide in the house- one of Turing's hobbies was seeing how many chemicals he could synthesize from household products. Although the apple was not analysed by the pathologist doing the post mortem, the cause of death was clearly cyanide poisoning and it was assumed at the inquest that he had dipped the apple in cyanide... Hodges suggests that he may have chosen this method to allow his mother to believe his death had been an accident.