Anti-nazi computer inventor Turing killed by homophobia

This video from Britain is called A brief video biography of the achievements of Alan Turing.

By Peter Frost in Britain:

Computers that beat the nazis

Thursday 20 December 2012

Bletchley Park, on the edge of what is now Milton Keynes, was the site of Britain’s main decryption establishment in the second world war where nazi codes were broken.

Most important were the ciphers of the German Enigma and Lorenz machines. The high-level intelligence produced at Bletchley Park played a crucial part in the Allied victory.

Bletchley was also the place that saw the conception and birth of the modern computer.

Given that sort of history you would expect any nation in the world to have turned it into a celebration of national pride. It should be a sparkling, well-funded and well-maintained tribute to its unique place in technological history and the victory over fascism.

Not here. Britain ignored the place for years. It was even threatened with demolition and clearance. Only the dedicated work of countless volunteers and enthusiasts have preserved and saved it for future generations to marvel at.

Today it’s a motley, not to mention scruffy, collection of museums and displays run by a diverse collection of enthusiast groups. It is still an amazing place to visit.

Disgracefully it wasn’t until last year that Bletchley Park finally received a Heritage Lottery Fund grant large enough to finally restore the site and tell its story in the way it deserves.

Even then the volunteers had to raise matching funds. By June this year they had successfully raised the money to unlock the grants.

Alan Mathison Turing worked at Bletchley Park. Mathematician, code-breaker and cryptanalyst Turing was the man who invented the computer.

He is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. He was born a century ago in 1912. He was also gay.

At Bletchley Park he was in charge of Hut 8, the key section responsible for breaking German naval codes.

He devised a number of ways of unlocking German ciphers, including electromechanical machines – early computers – that unlocked the codes generated by the famous Enigma machines.

After the war, in 1952, Turing‘s homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution. Turing met a 19-year-old called Arnold Murray and invited him to his house. Murray betrayed him.

A friend of Murray burgled Turing’s house, confident that the mathematician, fearful of exposure, would not tell the police.

The two men misjudged Turing. He reported the theft and admitted a sexual relationship with Murray.

To avoid prison, Turing accepted chemical castration with female hormones. The treatment ruined his health and fitness.

Previously he had often run the 40 miles from Bletchley Park to London for meetings. Only an injury had kept him out of the 1948 London Olympic marathon team.

Turing died a broken man in 1954 – he was 41. He bit into an apple dipped in cyanide.

An inquest recorded suicide but his mother believed it was an accident. Some even suspected he may have been murdered.

It took 55 years before British prime minister Gordon Brown, responding to a petition, made an official public apology for the appalling way Turing was treated.

“On behalf of the British government and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work, I am very proud to say ‘we’re sorry – you deserved so much better’,” he said.

Brown wrote: “Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was, under homophobic laws were treated terribly.”

Shamefully, however, the extraordinary achievements of this British scientific genius have still never been properly recognised and he has yet to be officially pardoned. The present state of Bletchley Park is an outstanding example of this, although Turing does have a statue in Manchester.

Some say Apple computer’s logo – an apple with a bite taken out of it – commemorates Turing’s curious death.

Turing admirer Stephen Fry asked the late Apple founder Steve Jobs if the story was true. “Sadly not,” said Jobs, “but God, I wish it were.”

For more information visit www.bletchleypark.gov.uk

See also here.

You may already be aware Queen Elizabeth out of the goodness of her heart issued a “mercy pardon” for Alan Turing almost 60 years after he committed suicide when the British courts had him neutered for the heinous crime of being a grossly indecent homosexual: here.

Meet the lawyer and DA wiping criminal records clean for Tennesseans convicted of “homosexual acts.” And in the U.K., the ‘Alan Turing Law’ hopes to do the same thing.

Related articles

• Hawking calls for pardon for code-breaker Turing (thehindu.com)
• Scientists call for Turing pardon (bbc.co.uk)
• Scientists Urge Pardon For Computer Pioneer (huffingtonpost.com)
• Alan Turing should be pardoned, argue Stephen Hawking and top scientists (guardian.co.uk)
• Stephen Hawking, Fellow Scientists Call for Pardon of Gay UK Codebreaker Alan Turing (towleroad.com)
• Stephen Hawking pushes for posthumous pardon for Alan Turing (theregister.co.uk)
• Hawking joins call to pardon gay inventor (sfgate.com)
• Call to pardon Alan Turing (thehindu.com)
• The Greatest Fictional Versions of Alan Turing (compuscience.net)