Alan Turing

Alan Turing (London, 1912 - Wilmslow, 1954) was a British mathematician and logician, regarded as one of the founders of computer science and artificial intelligence.

His work marks the shift from mechanical technologies of intelligence, which perform one operation at a time, to the computer that runs any procedure described to it.

His name is tied to three moments:

• 1936, with the paper On Computable Numbers, in which he described an abstract machine able to carry out any calculation written as a sequence of instructions, now called the Turing machine;
• the Second World War, when at Bletchley Park, in the United Kingdom, he led part of the work to break the messages of the German Enigma machine;
• 1950, with the paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which opens with the question "Can machines think?" and proposes the imitation game, later known as the Turing test: a machine passes if, in a written conversation, the questioner cannot tell it from a person.

He died on 7 June 1954, and his death has a culprit: the law of his own country.

In 1952 he reported a burglary at his home, and the investigation brought to light his relationship with a young man. The United Kingdom of the time treated homosexuality as a crime, under the charge of "gross indecency". Turing was tried and convicted, and given a choice: prison or an experimental hormonal "cure". He chose the "cure", a chemical castration with oestrogen that amounted to state torture inflicted for a year on a man whose only fault was to love. He also lost access to his confidential work for the government. Two years later he was found dead from cyanide poisoning, and the inquest ruled that he had taken his own life.

The United Kingdom acknowledged its guilt long afterwards:

• in 2009 Prime Minister Gordon Brown made the government's official apology for the treatment inflicted on him;
• in 2013 Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon;
• in 2017 the law that bears his name extended the pardon to the thousands of men convicted of the same offence.

Rehabilitation gives back the name, never the life. This is why his story remains an explicit condemnation of every law that turns love into a crime.

Source: Wikidata Q7251 e Wikipedia, voce Alan Turing, consultate il 21/10/2026, per date e tappe della biografia; A. M. Turing, On Computable Numbers, 1936, e Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind, 1950.

Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com

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