Philanthropist Sidney E Frank Champions Alan Turing at Bletchley Park

Mr Frank is probably best known in the UK for his campaign to raise awareness of RJ Mitchell, recently commemorated by a national exhibition in London. Like Alan Turing, Mitchell did not receive the public acclamation that historians and experts believe he deserved.

Now Mr Frank has decided to champion Alan Turing’s memory and work through the education and exhibition programmes initiated by Bletchley Park Trust. Among the plans is a new wing to our National Codes Centre’s Block B, right at the new entrance to the Park. The building will be a Science Centre with many exciting features.

Mr Frank is himself an exceptional man. He was born in poverty in Norwich, Connecticut. Just before WW2, aviation engine makers Pratt & Whitney employed him to travel the world in their service. Relatively late in life, Sidney E Frank went into drinks importing, where his extraordinary flair for business and marketing came to the fore. He made a fortune from bringing a liqueur called Jägermeister to America and later had an enormous success with a French-made vodka that he decided to call Grey Goose. Grey Goose flew off the shelves and became so fashionable that top television programmes included it in their scripts.

Mr Frank is conscious of the debt we owe both to great and famous WW2 heroes, especially Churchill and to unsung intellectual warriors among who Mitchell and Turing are pre-eminent. At Bletchley Park he and his team find much to enthral them and the Trust’s work has a strong resonance with programmes that Mr Frank is supporting in the US.

Over the last two years, the Bletchley Park Trust has restored Blocks, A, B (phase one) and E, established an American Garden Trail, opened the Bletchley Park Science and Innovation Centre and a number of new exhibitions and developed unique mathematics learning resources for students and educators. Work began this week on a grant-funded programme to restore Hut 8, Alan Turing’s former workplace. Bletchley Park is not government funded but has received Ministry of Defence and other government grants for capital projects.