Alan Turing Finally Acknowledged by British Government
(Sept. 11) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has apologized for the British government’s "horrifying" treatment a half-century ago of Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who played a key role in defeating Nazi Germany but was later convicted of "gross indecency" for having sex with another man.
Turing, now widely considered a founding father of computer science, led the successful effort to break Germany's complex Enigma military codes, thus giving the Allies a crucial edge in prosecuting the war. "It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War II could well have been very different."
Yet just seven years after the Allied victory, Turing was "in effect tried for being gay," Brown stated. Upon conviction he was stripped of his security clearances and offered what Brown called a "miserable" choice of punishment: prison or chemical castration through injections of the female hormone, estrogen. He chose the latter, but the resulting isolation and depression led him to kill himself two years later, at the age of 41.
Brown's apology was triggered by a petition initiated by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming and signed by more than 31,000 British citizens and residents. "Alan Turing deserved to be raised into the pantheon of great British minds," Graham-Cumming told AOL News. "But to do so without recognizing that we Britons also persecuted him would have been hypocritical."
Turing developed code-breaking devices that allowed Britain to read messages encoded by Germany's Enigma cipher machines, complex typewriter-like devices that generated a shifting code for Berlin's military communications. Beyond that effort, Turing left an enduring legacy in the Turing machine, a mathematical model that Graham-Cumming calls "the theoretical underpinning of all computers."
He is also remembered for the Turing Test, still considered a key measure of success in the field of artificial intelligence. Computer science's most prestigious honor, bestowed annually by the New York-based Association for Computing Machinery, is named the A. M. Turing Award.
Turing's insights "continue to drive innovation and produce unimaginable advances in science and technology that have made the world a better place,'' said ACM President Dame Wendy Hall.
Inagh Payne, a niece of Turing, told the BBC that she had never been aware either of his major contribution to the war or of his sexuality, saying the family "kept mum about that sort of thing." She said, "We realize now that he was gay and we think he was treated abominably."
British gay activist Peter Tatchell said that Turing was one of an estimated 100,000 British gay men-- including playwright Oscar Wilde in 1895 -- convicted under Britain's "gross indecency" law, which was formally repealed in 2003.
''While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back,'' Brown stated, "his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him."
"Gordon Brown's message is clear," Graham-Cumming told AOL News. "Do not allow prejudice to color our thinking or actions.''
http://news.aol.com/article/gordon-b...ment-of/666717
