jonathan-cunningham:

Recently, over 23,000 people signed an online petition to ask the UK government to pardon Alan Turing for homosexuality, considered the crime of “gross indecency” by the Labouchere Amendment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. Yesterday, the motion was dismissed by the House of Lords. Considering that Turing performed stellar and unique service to the British government during World War II, and his work provided much of the basis for the modern computer, this is unconscionable.

Alan Turing (1912-1954), who is known as both the father of computer science and the father of artificial intelligence, mechanized the decoding process of the German’s most important code during World War II, Enigma. Prior to Turing’s work, only 50 Enigma messages could be decoded in a week; Turing’s “bombes,” (derived from work by Polish cryptographer Marian Rejewski and smuggled out of Poland ahead of the German invasion), decoded 3,000 messages per day.

In 1952, after he was arrested, Turing was given a choice between chemical castration and prison. He chose castration. Still, his security clearances were revoked, and he was barred from consulting work. He committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide in 1954.

After he saved the entire country, Alan Turing was castrated by the British government because he had a sexual relationship with a man.