Alan Turing - a great mathematician with a tragic fate

In the English estate of Bletchley Park, where during the Second World War there was a center for intercepting and deciphering German messages, a statue of the founder of computer science, an outstanding mathematician and inventor Alan Turing, opened today.
Many people know about the history of deciphering German codes from the fascinating spy detective Robert Harris "Enigma" and the film "The Enigma Code". But even in Turing’s homeland in the UK, not everyone knows about his contribution to science and his role in deciphering Enigma.
Even computer experts in Britain demonstrate a low level of knowledge about Turing's legacy. A survey among British IT industry figures showed that about half of them had never heard of Turing.
"I have no idea. Who is this? ”, - a journalist from a leading IT newspaper answered the Turing question. “I have to admit that I didn’t know who Turing was,” confessed another survey participant, “but now I know because I found it on Google.”
The opening of the statue again reminded of the difficult biography of the scientist.

On Tuesday, a statue of Alan Turing by sculptor Stephen Kettle opened in Bletchley Park. The statue was commissioned by the sculptor of the late Sydney Frank, an American billionaire and philanthropist.
The Turing statue in full size and weighing one and a half tons is made by a very unusual technology - made up of half a million pieces of ancient Welsh slate with an age of five hundred million years. These stones, like the rest of Britain, could have been dominated by the Nazis, if Turing had not used his mathematical genius to crack the messages of the German Enigma encryption machine.
The Bomba machine created by him for this purpose laid the foundations for the modern computer era.
Alan Turing began work in Bletchley Park in September 1939 and soon came up with the idea of ​​building a special machine for breaking the Enigma code. He led a small group and made a fundamental contribution to the breaking of the code in December 1939. By August 1940, Turing, together with his friend and colleague Gordon Welchman, designed the Bomb, which allowed the decoding of German messages almost immediately after they were intercepted.
Historians agree that the interpreters at Bletchley Park helped shorten the war by two years and saved a huge number of lives.
However, Alan Turing did not receive public recognition during his lifetime for his colossal achievements.
Of those who have heard of Turing, almost no one knows about the circumstances of his death. “All I know about Alan Turing is that he is a mathematician, logician and cryptographer who died eating an apple in 1954,” said one observer.
The apple from which Turing died has been poisoned by cyanide. Two years before his death, Turing was convicted of homosexuality, which was then banned in the UK. To avoid imprisonment, he agreed to one-year injections of estrogen, designed to suppress his sexual desire. As a convicted person, Turing lost access to secret works and the possibility of participating in a deciphering counterintelligence activity. He committed suicide at the age of only 41 years.
There is a legend that the old "rainbow" Apple logo appeared as a tribute to Turing's memory.
The version of Turing's suicide was repeatedly disputed. Both the special services of Great Britain and the special services of other countries were accused of killing him. Some gay activists claim that Turing was killed because of his non-standard orientation.
“Much of Turing’s story is in his homosexuality. But it was deleted from the story, ”says publisher of Gay.com web magazine Stewart Who. “It's like writing about Martin Luther King, without mentioning that he was black.”
PS Translation supplemented with information from The Best of Milton Keynes .