11. We would love to give Alan Turing the opportunity to live in a more tolerant and appreciative world
Graduating from King’s College, Cambridge in 1934, at the age of only twenty-two Alan Turing was elected a fellow of his college on the basis of his dissertation proving the central limit theorem. Rapidly becoming one of the leading minds of mathematical computation, in 1938 Turing was awarded his Ph.D. with his introduction of ordinal logic and the notion of relative computing. Recruited by the British Government during the Second World War, Turing worked as a leading member of the secret team at Bletchley Park, employing his genius as part of the coordinated crypto-analytical effort to break the German ciphers and decode communications.
Performing a pivotal role at the Government Code and Cypher School, Turing’s team was responsible for recovering vital intelligence that directly resulted in the Allied victory against the Axis powers. Prosecuted in 1952 under the Labouchere Amendment, which stipulated homosexuality was a “gross indecency” and a criminal offense, Turing was compelled to accept chemical castration as an alternative to imprisonment. Committing suicide in 1954 from cyanide poisoning as a result of the barbaric actions of the British government, Turing unquestionably deserves the chance to apply his incomparable genius in a more tolerant and appreciative age.