Alan Turing

1912 - 1954

Computer Science Founder, Code Breaker

Alan Turing was a founder of computer science and a code breaker -- in more than one way. He helped the Allies win World War II by cracking the German communication code, but his violation of Britain's homosexuality code may have led to his death.

In 1936, Turing published On Computable Numbers, a long technical paper in which he conceived a machine that moved from one state to another using a precise set of rules. He joined the National Physical Laboratory in London in 1945. It turns out Turning had an ACE up his sleeve -- the Automatic Computing Engine.

By 1948, Turing was deputy director of the Computing Laboratory at Manchester. There, the first running example of a machine that could store a program, the Manchester University Computer, was produced.

During World War II, Turing played a crucial role in cracking the enemy communication code. But Turing was gay, and his country had strict laws against homosexuality. In 1952, he was convicted of the crime of gross indecency, Britain's law against homosexuality. His country sentenced him to female hormone therapy to kill his sexual desire.

Many believe the hormones killed him, too. In 1954, a year after the therapy that many believe changed his personality had ended, he apparently ate an apple he had soaked in cyanide and died.

Science lost one of its most important contributors at least in part because his government did not recognize him as a fully-acceptable person. Where might the world be today if Turning had lived to break another barrier or invent another machine that would change the world? He was a major contributor to modern society, but if the reports of his suicide death are true, he died of intolerance, a curable disease.