~~June 10, 2014~~

On the morning of 8 June, 1954, the body of Alan Turing was discovered by his housekeeper. There was a bottle of potassium cyanide in the room, and an apple, from which a few bites had been taken, on the table beside the bed. The coroner ruled suicide, and it was assumed that the apple had been dipped in a cyanide solution.

Sixty years ago, on the 7th of June 1954, one of the greatest people of all this century helped invent the computer and the science behind the PC and we at World of Gay People here are honoring his legacy for his work as a gay man who was arrested in 1952 for being gay.

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS ( 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, computer scientist and philosopher. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered as the “Father of Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.

During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre. For a time he led Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

After the war, he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the ACE, among the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1948 Turing joined Max Newman‘s Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, where he assisted development of the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, first observed in the 1960s.

Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952, when such acts were still criminalized in the UK. He accepted treatment with estrogen injections (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison.

Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death a suicide; his mother and some others believed it was accidental. On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for “the appalling way he was treated.” The Queen granted him a posthumous pardon on 24 December 2013.

~~History of his criminal indecency~~

In January 1952, Turing, then 39, started a relationship with Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old unemployed man. Turing met Murray just before Christmas outside the Regal Cinema when walking down Manchester’s Oxford Road and had invited him to lunch. On 23 January Turing’s house was burgled. Murray told Turing that the burglar was an acquaintance of his, and Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation he acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray.

Homosexual acts were criminal offences in the United Kingdom at that time, and both men were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. Initial committal proceedings for the trial occurred on 27 February, where Turing’s solicitor “reserved his defense”.

Alan Turing OBE, FRS
Turing at the time of his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society
Born	Alan Mathison Turing 23 June 1912 Maida Vale, London, England
Died	7 June 1954 (aged 41) Wilmslow, Cheshire, England
Residence	Wilmslow, Cheshire, England
Nationality	British
Fields	Mathematics, cryptanalysis,computer science, Biology
Institutions	University of Cambridge Government Code and Cypher School National Physical Laboratory University of Manchester
Alma mater	Sherborne School King’s College, Cambridge Princeton University
Thesis	Systems of Logic based on Ordinals (1938)
Doctoral advisor	Alonzo Church
Doctoral students	Robin Gandy
Known for	[show]
Notable awards	OBE FRS