During World War II, while working at Bletchley Park on breaking the Enigma encryption machine, Alan Turing became concerned about the safety of his savings in case of a German invasion of England. To preserve them, he bought two silver ingots weighing a total of 90 kg and buried them in a forest nearby.
When he wanted to dig them up some time later, he couldn’t do so because, firstly, the area underwent renovation, and secondly, Turing couldn’t decipher his own code used to encrypt the treasure’s location.
Alan Turing’s inability to retrieve his treasure underscores the challenges of encryption and the importance of keeping decryption keys secure. Despite his significant contributions to cryptography and code-breaking during the war, even Turing himself faced difficulties in decrypting his own encoded messages, highlighting the complexity of the field and the potential consequences of lost or forgotten keys.
This anecdote adds a personal and intriguing dimension to Turing’s legacy as a pioneering figure in both mathematics and computer science.