Alan Turing was not only a brilliant mathematician but also a keen sportsman. He played rugby, hockey, and golf at school, rowed for King’s College at Cambridge, and played hockey at Princeton with Shaun Wylie, who later joined him at Bletchley Park.

During and after the war, he took up running, once covering the distance from London to his mother’s home in Guildford. He was successful in competitions and might have qualified for the 1948 Olympic marathon had he not been injured.