Alan Turing, Condemned Code Breaker and Computer Visionary

LONDON — His genius embraced the first visions of modern computing and produced seminal insights into what became known as “artificial intelligence.” But, at his death several years later, much of his secretive wartime accomplishments remained classified, far from public view in a nation seized by the security concerns of the Cold War. On June 7, 1954, Alan Turing, a British mathematician who has since been acknowledged as one the most innovative and powerful thinkers of the 20th century — sometimes called the progenitor of modern computing — died as a criminal, having been convicted under Victorian laws as a homosexual and forced to endure chemical castration.

Source: www.nytimes.com