Alan Turing is famous for his influential efforts for the British during WWII, designing the Turing Machine (which can be considered a general purpose computer, which was revolutionary at the time). It single-handedly cracked the enigma code put in place by the Germans to encrypt their messages. He worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park and intercepted many crucial messages which gave the British a decisive advantage, essentially helping to win the war.
Turing was, however, prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts; the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 had mandated that “gross indecency” was a criminal offence in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as a suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning.
In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for “the appalling way he was treated”. Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon in 2013. The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
The Turing Society 