In June, Blogger John Graham-Cumming wrote about the injustices done to one of the most famous men in the computer sciences field and to date 3,219 people have signed his on-line petition at the Number Ten website asking that the British government apologise for it’s treatment of the famous scientist.
Alan Turing is often regarded as the father of modern computing and played a major part in helping to break the German Enigma codes with his “Ultra” team from Bletchley Park but his prosecution in 1952 for being gay led to his chemical castration in a misguided attempt to turn him into a heterosexual man. In 1954 he committed suicide and a great mind was forever lost. Had he lived Turing would have celebrated his 97th birthday in June.
Richard Dawkins, who has lent his voice to the campaign and who is due to present a program for Channel 4 on Turing said:
“Turing arguably made a greater contribution to defeating the Nazis than Eisenhower or Churchill. Thanks to Turing and his ‘Ultra’ colleagues at Bletchley Park, Allied generals in the field were consistently, over long periods of the war, privy to detailed German plans before the German generals had time to implement them.
“After the war, when Turing’s role was no longer top-secret, he should have been knighted and fêted as a saviour of his nation. Instead, this gentle, stammering, eccentric genius was destroyed, for a ‘crime’, committed in private, which harmed nobody,”
The deadline for the on-line petition is set for January of next year so there is still plenty of time in which to sign it do so should you wish to do so. (See links below)
See:
On-line Petition at the No.10 website
John Graham-Cumming’s original post on June 23rd (Turing’s birthday)
Bletchley Park website homepage
Alan Turing at Wikipedia
Filed under: Death by Belief, Homosexuality, Stupidity, Alan Turing, Bletchley Park, John Graham-Cumming, Petition, Richard Dawkins
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