Alan Turing

ALAN TURING Alan Turing is a brilliant British mathematician and one of the leading best scientists in the 20th century. He is the “Father of Modern Computer” and “Artificial Intelligence”. His not famous or well known outside scientific circles during his lifetime because his crucial work was considered the Top secret until the late 1970s. He became the center of media attention when Queen Elizabeth II granted him a Royal Pardon on December 23, 2013. He was also the one who cracked the German Enigma during World War II that ‘saves countless lives’ according to British Prime Minister - David Cameron. Turing was arrested in 1952 for Homosexuality, and tried and convicted of ‘gross indecency’. During 1950s, Homosexuality was a crime and Turing was given a choice between prison and chemical castration. He choose the chemical castration – which involve a series of estrogen injections for one year. He received a ‘treatment’ for his disorder, but two years later, he was found dead of an apparent suicide. He was 41 years old at that time.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY/HISTORY: He was born on June 23, 1912 in London, England with a well-to-do middle class family. His parents had met and married in India. Alan’s father is a British member of the Indian Civil Service and spent most of his life abroad. When Alan was about one year old, his mother followed her husband in India and he was left with his elder brother in the care of friends’ family. Turing studied at a British public schools, first at St.Michael’s in St.Leonard-on-Sea, and then at the famous Sherborne School in Dorset. Alan was a product of British public school culture, where sensitive and vulnerable individuals are often subject to the typical public school regimen of humiliation and isolation from society. It was at Sherborne, that Turing became aware of being gay and he fell in love for the first time. It was also at Sherborne that he showed his natural inclination/intelligence for mathematics and