For his role in defeating Germany’s Enigma cipher during World War II, Alan Turing belongs on any shortlist of brilliant men whose efforts were indispensable to the defeat of Nazism. When the war was over, though, his country betrayed him because he was gay — an affront to Pious fictions about the nature of sexuality and ‘good’ behavior.
Turing’s reputation has been restored — but there is no undoing his suicide upon public humiliation.
The New York Times offers a retrospective obituary.
His genius embraced the first visions of modern computing and produced seminal insights into what became known as “artificial intelligence.” As one of the most influential code breakers of World War II, his cryptology yielded intelligence believed to have hastened the Allied victory.
But, at his death several years later, much of his secretive wartime accomplishments remained classified, far from public view in a nation seized by the security concerns of the Cold War. Instead, by the narrow standards of his day, his reputation was sullied.
Well worth reading.