susanduic

I think anyone who enjoyed Breaking the Code about the scientist Alan Turing should consider signing the following petition Petition to: apologize for the prosecution of Alan Turing that led to his untimely death. | Number10.gov.uk

PLEASE

susanduic

orpheum

About 50 years too late.

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Mr Sloane

I do think it was terrible what was done to Alan Turing but I don't know what these government apologies achieve. Making apologies for things you are n't responsible for makes no sense to me. There are plenty of things politicians could and should apologise for instead of getting involved in publicity stunts.

Steve Crook

Sorry Susan, but I agree with Mr Sloane. There's nothing that the government can do to help him and "apologizing" for what their predecessors did would be an empty gesture.

Turing is remembered in many ways:
The Turing Test is still the ultimate test for determining true artificial intelligence and machine consciousness.

Since 1966, the Turing Award has been given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person for technical contributions to the computing community. It is widely considered to be the computing world's equivalent to the Nobel Prize.

Breaking the Code is a 1986 play by Hugh Whitemore about Alan Turing. The play ran in London's West End beginning in November 1986 and on Broadway from November 15, 1987 to April 10, 1988. There was also a 1996 BBC television production. In all cases, Derek Jacobi had the title role. The Broadway production was nominated for three Tony Awards including Best Actor in a Play, Best Featured Actor in a Play, and Best Direction of a Play, and for two Drama Desk Awards, for Best Actor and Best Featured Actor.

Various tributes to Turing have been made 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. It is in Sackville Park, between the University of Manchester building on Whitworth Street and the Canal Street 'gay village'. A celebration of Turing's life and achievements arranged by the British Logic Colloquium and the British Society for the History of Mathematics was held on 5 June 2004 at the University of Manchester; the Alan Turing Institute was initiated in the university that summer. The building housing the School of Mathematics, the Photon Science Institute and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics is named the Alan Turing Building and was opened in July 2007.

On 23 June 1998, on what would have been Turing's 86th birthday, Andrew Hodges, his biographer, unveiled an official English Heritage Blue Plaque at his birthplace and childhood home in Warrington Crescent, London, now the Colonnade hotel. To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, a memorial plaque was unveiled on 7 June 2004 at his former residence, Hollymeade, in Wilmslow, south of Manchester.

For his achievements in computing, various universities have honoured him. On 28 October 2004 a bronze statue of Alan Turing sculpted by John W Mills was unveiled at the University of Surrey in Guildford. The statue marks the 50th anniversary of Turing's death. It portrays him carrying his books across the campus. Turing Road in the University's Research Park predates this.

A building in the School of Technology at Oxford Brookes University is called the Turing Building.

The Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico and Los Andes University in Bogotá, Colombia, both have computer laboratories named after Turing, and Aarhus University, Århus, Denmark similarly has a building named in his honour. The University of Texas at Austin has an honours computer science programme named the Turing Scholars. Istanbul Bilgi University organises an annual conference on the theory of computation called Turing Days. The computer room in King's College, Cambridge is named the "Turing Room" after him. Carnegie Mellon University has a granite bench, situated in The Hornbostel Mall, with the name "A. M. Turing" carved across the top, "Read" down the left leg, and "Write" down the other. The Boston GLBT pride organization named Turing their 2006 Honorary Grand Marshal.

Alan Turing also appears in 2000 novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. In the novel, Turing is depicted as his real life persona and his work at Bletchley Park is covered.

On 13 March 2000, St Vincent & The Grenadines issued a set of stamps to celebrate the greatest achievements of the twentieth century, one of which carries a recognisable portrait of Turing against a background of repeated 0s and 1s, and is captioned '1937: Alan Turing's theory of digital computing'.

A 1.5-ton, life-size statue of Turing was unveiled on 19 June 2007 at Bletchley Park. Built from approximately half a million pieces of Welsh slate, it was sculpted by Stephen Kettle, having been commissioned by the late American billionaire Sidney Frank.

The Turing Relay is a six-stage relay race on riverside footpaths from Ely to Cambridge and back. These paths were used for running by Turing while at Cambridge; his marathon best time was 2 hours, 46 minutes. The marathon world best time in the early 1940s was in the region of 2 hours, 25 minutes.


He's remembered and appreciated by many people, especially by the people he would respect - which excludes politicians

Steve

didi-5

I agree with the others. What happened to Alan Turing was wrong, but he is now remembered in many ways and I don't feel an empty political apology would mean very much, really.

CaptainWaggett

Not sure why Turing is more or less deserving of sympathy than any of the 1000s of other chaps convicted of the same offence who didn't happen to be computer geniuses. Surely a postumous apology or pardon or whatever for Turing would be something of an insult to them (many of whom must still be alive). And as people have said, it's really not Gordon Brown's fault - why should he be expected to apologise for somethat that happened when he was a child. (He did vote to reduce the gay age of consent to 16)

narabdela

Couldn't agree more.

Fellwanderer

That is probably true.

However, governments are always placed in a dilemma over such issues - take action and the opposition claims they're jumping on a bandwagon, do nothing and the opposition claims they are being heartless and cowardly.

Nick Dando

And the Apple with a bite taken out of it is a tribute to Alan Turing, allegedly.

According to Wikipedia, so it's got to be right.

"Another explanation exists that the bitten apple pays homage to the mathematician Alan Turing, who committed suicide by eating an apple he had laced with cyanide. Turing is regarded as one of the fathers of the computer. The rainbow colors of the logo were rumored to be a reference to the rainbow flag, as a homage to Turing's homosexuality."

Nick

Steve Crook

The opposition will jump on them whatever they do. That's what the opposition does in the adversarial system we have. It doesn't matter what the opposition actually believes or what they would do if the positions were reversed. It's just how politicians waste their time, opposing each other regardless of what they actually think

Steve

susanduic

Stephen Fry suggested it was a good thing to do (on his mini-blog)-I agree with him to the extent that as far as I am concerned anything however small that can be done to mitigate some of the horrors of those evil times must be a good thing. He'll be a symbol for all the unsung victims.

I'm too fragile to even think about the horrors of present day spin-doctors and what they may do about it........but I suppose someone will make capital out of it?

susanduic

Fellwanderer

I agree - and despite what I said earlier, did sign the petition. Must have been quite a rush today as my name has disappeared off the last 500 already.

Mark O

Because Alan's 'genius' regarding Enigma machines saved thousands of lives during World War II that's why he deserves the pardon.

Poor Alan, instead of being sent to Prison for his 'crime', he opted for hormone treatment in an attempt to 'cure' him of his homosexuality, he started to grow breasts and lost his athletic physique which must of been very demeaning to him as an accomplished runner who regularly ran the 40 miles between Bletchley and London for meetings and eventually drove him to commit suicide.

Mark

Steve Crook

Sorry Susan, and Stephen, I think that all it would do, at most, would let some politician crow about how wonderful they are.

I suppose that the publicity it's got has also brought this sorry tale to the attention of some people who weren't aware of it. But I certainly don't think that any politician should "apologize" for it. That would be an empty gesture that would make a mockery of the situation. At most, they could express their agreement that it was a terrible thing. But as I don't care much what any politician thinks, that would be an empty gesture as well.

If they were to actually do something useful about the situation which although is now much better than it was in the past, is still far from perfect. But I doubt very much if any politician would do that unless they thought that there was something in it for them, like lots of votes. I would be amazed if any of them just did something because they thought it would be the right thing to do.

Steve

Mark O

Alan recieves his apology...........

BBC NEWS | Technology | PM apology after Turing petition

Mark