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LGBT+ History Month Icons from the LGBT+ Reading Group Gloucestershire.
Alan Turing - his code breaking work to defeat the Nazi Enigma machines shortened the war by up to 2 years. But as a gay man he was arrested, charged, chemically castrated, and committed suicide aged 41
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Alan Turing - his code breaking work to defeat the Nazi Enigma machines shortened the war by up to 2 years. But as a gay man he was arrested, charged, chemically castrated, and committed suicide aged 41
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Alan Mathison Turing, born 23rd June 1912, was an English mathematician, computer scientist, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist.
Fiercely bright, with both a Cambridge degree and a Princeton Doctorate, in the second world war he worked at Bletchley Park.
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Fiercely bright, with both a Cambridge degree and a Princeton Doctorate, in the second world war he worked at Bletchley Park.
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For a time he led Hut 8, the section that was responsible for Nazi naval cryptanalysis. Here, he devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of Nazi codes. In doing so he saved millions of allied lives.
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In the late 1940s and early 1950s Turing developed the Automatic Computing Engine. He then moved onto mathematical biology with papers on morphogenesis, how cells and organisms develop their shape, and on the mathematics of chaotically evolving oscillating chemical reactions
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He remained highly influential in both theoretical computer science and thinking about artificial intelligence. He created ‘The Imitation Game’ aka The Turing Test, the test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to or greater than a human being.
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Despite his huge contribution he was never fully recognised for his work, partly because of the Official Secrets Act but also because he was gay.
Only in 2009 did a UK government finally apologise. In 2013 the Queen granted him a pardon. A pardon for being LGBT+. Words fail us
Only in 2009 did a UK government finally apologise. In 2013 the Queen granted him a pardon. A pardon for being LGBT+. Words fail us
