Gscene News Archive

Mathematician John Graham-Cummings has started a campaign to get an official apology for the treatment of Alan Turing who, although he helped shorten World War 2 through cracking the Nazi's Enigma code, was prosecuted because of his homosexuality. He committed suicide aged 41.

Turing was also a critical pioneer of computer science. He defined a theoretical model of computers (at a time when 'computer' meant a person who computed numbers) that holds true today. He suggested how we might determine whether a computer was sentient (with the Turing Test).

Turing's death should remind us how prejudice ruins and degrades. He was prosecuted for 'indecent acts' and eventually took his own life aged 41. This man, in his prime, killed himself because at the time homosexuality was illegal and having been prosecuted he was then chemically castrated in an attempt to 'cure' him. He had been stripped of his security clearance.

The petition states: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to apologize for the prosecution of Alan Turing that led to his untimely death.

It can be signed at:
petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/