The great mathematician and computer science pioneer Alan Turing received a posthumous award, the Icon Award for Outstanding Achievement. It’s one of the Attitude Awards and it was accepted by two of his nieces. Recently the production of a biopic about the scientist started starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing and Keira Knightley as his friend and colleague Joan Clarke.
Attitude is a British gay lifestyle magazine that annually awards several prizes. This year one of them was awarded to Alan Turing: his photograph was put on the cover of the magazine with the title “the gay who saved the world”. The point was to remember a great scientist who was treated horribly because of his homosexuality, so much that he committed suicide in 1954.
The prize awarded by a magazine that after all works in a niche – I honestly didn’t even know it – is another opportunity to remember the story of Alan Turing. His work for British intelligence to decipher the codes used by the Germans during World War II was crucial but only many years later it was publicly acknowledged. For this reason, the Speaker of the British House of Commons John Bercow presented this posthumous award.
Because of his homosexuality, Alan Turing had legal problems because of a British law from Victorian era and had to undergo chemical castration to get a suspended sentence. In recent years there have been various initiatives to achieve true justice for a great scientist whose contribution according to various experts gave a huge strategic advantage to the Allies during World War II. Today, among the tributes to Alan Turing there’s a statue in Sackville Park in Manchester (photo ©Lmno).
In 2009, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly acknowledged the homophobic treatment suffered by Turing and expressed a posthumous public apology admitting that he deserved much better treatment. Another ongoing initiative asks for Turing to be given a posthumous pardon.
Meanwhile, the production of “The Imitation Game”, the biopic about the life of Alan Turing started. There’s already some controversy because according to some comments on the script it takes far too many liberties by changing too many elements of the scientist’s life.
In any case, it’s good that we’re talking about Alan Turing for his troubled personal history and for major contributions he gave to the war effort of the Allies in World War II and to science and technology.
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