After the tremendous call due to an online petition, the British government today finally and formally apologizes posthumously to Alan Turing for his inhumane treatment. This despite his significant contribution not only to the computing knowledge and mathematics, but in his war effort to decipher the German's secret code during WWII.
In a statement on the British Government Web site, Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledged Turing's "outstanding" contribution during World War II.
"He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war," he wrote, adding, "The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely."
Turing is considered one of Britain's greatest mathematicians, a genius who is credited with inventing the Bombe, a code-breaking machine that deciphered messages encoded by German Enigma machines during World War II.
He went on to develop the Turing machine, a theory that automatic computation cannot solve all mathematical problems, which is considered the basis of modern computing.
One would hope that in this day and age, such treatment would no longer occur. But the human being capacity for stupidity, and for cruelty, has never ceased to amaze me.
Zz.
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