20 Jul 2013

Alan Turing Must Be Pardoned

Alan Turing looks set to receive a pardon, after the government lent its support to a Bill that would overturn the wartime codebreaker's conviction for being gay. Turing took his own life with cyanide in 1954 at the age of 41 - he had been sentenced to chemical castration for the crime of gross indecency.

Alan Turing

The mathematician, one of the fathers of computer science, worked at the British government's Second World War code-breaking headquarters at Bletchley Park. He is best known for having cracked the messages sent by the German Enigma machines and is credited with saving the country from starvation.

Last year the government rejected demands that he be granted a pardon as he had not been wrongly convicted at the time, even if that law no longer existed. "A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence," Lib Dem justice minister Lord McNally said.

Huffington Post