Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (1912 - 1954)

After the death of Alan Turing...

 

The Alan Turing law

 

In August 2009, British programmer John Graham-Cumming started a petition urging the British government to apologise for Turing's prosecution as a homosexual. The petition received more than 30,000 signatures. The prime minister, Gordon Brown, acknowledged the petition, releasing a statement on 10 September 2009 apologising and describing the treatment of Turing as "appalling"

 

In December 2011, William Jones and his member of Parliament, John Leech, created an e-petition requesting that the British government pardon Turing for his conviction of "gross indecency":

 

The petition gathered over 37,000 signatures, and was submitted to Parliament by the Manchester MP John Leech but the request was discouraged by Justice Minister Lord McNallyJohn

 

Leech, the MP for Manchester Withington (2005–15), submitted several bills to Parliament and led a high-profile campaign to secure the pardon. Leech made the case in the House of Commons that Turing's contribution to the war made him a national hero and that it was "ultimately just embarrassing" that the conviction still stood. Leech continued to take the bill through Parliament and campaigned for several years, gaining the public support of numerous leading scientists, including Stephen Hawking. At the British premiere of a film based on Turing's life, The Imitation Game, the producers thanked Leech for bringing the topic to public attention and securing Turing's pardon. Leech is now regularly described as the "architect" of Turing's pardon and subsequently the Alan Turing Law which went on to secure pardons for 75,000 other men and women convicted of similar crimes.

Greatest British invention of the 20th century

 

In 1999, Time magazine named Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and stated, "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.

 

Turing has been honoured in various ways in Manchester, the city where he worked towards the end of his life. In 1994, a stretch of the A6010 road (the Manchester city intermediate ring road) was named "Alan Turing Way". A bridge carrying this road was widened, and carries the name Alan Turing Bridge. A statue of Turing was unveiled in Manchester on 23 June 2001 in Sackville Park, between the University of Manchester building on Whitworth Street and Canal Street.The memorial statue depicts the "father of computer science" sitting on a bench at a central position in the park, holding an apple.

 

A blue plaque was unveiled at King's College, Cambridge on the centenary of his birth on 23 June 2012 and is now installed at the college's Keynes Building on King's Parade.

 

On 25 March 2021, the Bank of England publicly unveiled the design for a new £50 note, featuring Turing's portrait, before its official issue on 23 June, Turing's birthday. Turing was selected as the new face of the note in 2019 following a public nomination process.

 

Turing Award

 

The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science and is colloquially known as or often referred to as the "Nobel Prize of Computing" - The award is named after Alan Turing,