Alan Turing was a war hero, a giant of computer science, and a gay man who simply wanted to be able to live freely.
History should remember Turing as the innovative mathematician and codebreaker who played a pivotal role in ending the Second World War, and laid the foundations for personal computing and artificial intelligence.
“Alan Turing was an outstanding mathematician whose work has had an enormous impact on how we live today,” Mark Carney, then governor of the Bank of England, said while announcing a new £50 note bearing the scientist’s likeness in July 2019. Turing is a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”
However, it is impossible to speak of Turing’s achievements without also mentioning the brutal, institutionalised homophobia that ultimately cut his life short.