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Apology for Turing’s Treatment Stirs the Twittersphere

September 14, 2009
by Don Clark
Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Don Clark

In life, Alan Turing helped win World War II and sowed the seeds for the modern computer industry. In death, the persecuted British mathematician may provide some lessons about how public opinion reverberates in cyberspace.

Responding to a petition posted on the Web site for Number 10 Downing Street, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown late Thursday apologized for what he characterized as the “appalling” treatment of Turing 55 years earlier by British officials. Turing, who was gay, was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency and given two choices, prison or “chemical castration” by a series of injections of female hormones. Two years after choosing the latter punishment, he committed suicide.

Turing had helped lead the team of British codebreakers at Bletchley Park whose work gave the Allies crucial advantages against German forces during the war, and formed a basis for later generations of computers.

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