With the release of the highly anticipated film The Imitation Game, many will be introduced for the first time to Alan Turing, a man history almost forgot. So who was Alan Turing? If you are now googling his name on your tablet or smartphone, you have him to thank as he was influential in the development of computer science and artificial intelligence. His "Turing Machine" is considered to be one of the first computers.
During World War II, as you will learn if you watch the film, Turing led a team of codebreakers that was responsible for breaking the Germans' seemingly unbreakable Enigma machine. This success reportedly caused Winston Churchill to say that Turing and his team had made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory. Unfortunately, the world wouldn't know of this contribution for over 50 years as it remained highly classified.
In 1952, Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts, which was still against the law in England at this time. To avoid prison, Turing agreed to chemical castration with oestrogen hormone injections.
The arrest also led to the loss of his security clearance. which barred him from working for the British government and is suspected to have led to his suicide by cyanide poisoning in 1954 at age 41.
In December 2013, Queen Elizabeth pardoned Alan Turing. A year earlier in Chicago, Alan Turing was the first to be honored on the Legacy Project, a rotating outdoor LGBT history exhibit located in Lakeview.
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