Alan Turing - a side note

"We had gay burglers the other night. They broke in and rearranged the furniture."
Robin Williams.

Ah... these comedians could plummet to any depth. But then what's life without humour -a pile of bread sopped in water, a bowl of cabbage, an insipid tale of mundane running around matters. Humour is the salt of life! But then lets save it for some other day. After a long time I have got some time to reflect and write and so must I.

Alan Turing - the man Winston Churchill dubbed as the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in WWII died in an not-so-honourable way - eating a cyanide laced apple. There's a Hindi saying, "Chirag tale andhera" (below the lamp lies the darkness) - very apt here.

Read on.


Turing - the ' shining-lamp' phase
I first read about Turing during my graduation days. He had an Indian connection - his father was a member of Indian Civil Service. His maternal grandfather was the Chief Engineer of Madras Railways. In fact he was 'conceived' at Chhatrapur, Orissa. He was the hero of WWII- the master code breaker of German Enigma machines. Father of AI, he created the concept of Turing Test to distinguish between humans and robots. In 1999, he was name by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Important People of 20th century.


Turing - the 'darkness-below-the-lamp' phase
So far so good for being a war hero, a celebrated personality (however eccentric), a poineer of computer science, cryptanalyst, mathematician, logician, chemist - we are still finding out. Add another adjective to it - and it all goes in vain - "GAY".

In 1952 Alan Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency. As an alternate to imprisonment, he was injected with female oestrogen hormones and chemically castrated - a known side effect of which was the development of breasts. His security clearance was removed and he wasn't permitted to continue his research with UK government. For two years he loomed between death and despair and finally killed himself by eating the proverbial apple. So much so for his service of the nation (and possibly of humanity). No wonder they forgot to mention this in text books :-)

Honour restored or too late?
Times have changed now - and how! This year after a petition signing campaign to urge the British government to apologize to Alan Turing posthumously, the government has finally relented. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown released a statement two days ago. It described the treatment of Alan Turing as "utterly unfair" and "appalling". It also noted that British government was "deeply sorry" and that Turing "deserved much better".

Ahem.


Image Credits: Wikipedia