Letters/Copy letters

Scope and Content

Exchange of letters with William Boone. In his letter of 5 January, Boone says he is pleased to hear that Turing and Newman will support his fellowship application, and asks Turing to sends references to Dr F A Young and C J Lapp [which is done]. In his reply of 15 January, Turing says he has not been doing much on the word problem recently, "I had one of those wild ideas which come to nothing much", and asks for his opinion on a paper by Novikov, and whether it is nonsense. In a further letter of 8 August 1953, Boone says "I'm almost sure of the one automorphism problem, which as I wrote you a long time ago, as an interpretation in terms of a Turing machine which on an expandable cylindrical drum". Says hopes to speak to Max Newman at a meeting in Canada about unsolvable word theory.

Related Material

See also TUR/Add/23,48, 57, 59, 74