UK apologizes for the death of Alan Turing

Gordon Brown said he regretted the “terrible” attitude towards Alan Turing, a cryptographer ( mathematician, logic, and founder of computer science ) of the Second World War, who befell him as gay.

The online petition on the site “No 10” ( Downing Street 10 - the residence of the Prime Minister ) called on the government to offer a posthumous apology to the pioneer of computers.

In 1952, Turing was convicted of indecent behavior after acknowledging sexual relations with a man. Two years later he committed suicide.

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The campaign was the idea of ​​the scholar John Graham-Cumming.

He insisted on apologizing for how the mathematician was treated after the conviction. In addition, he appealed to the Queen with a request for a posthumous Turing knighthood.

The campaign was supported by the writer Jan McEwan, the scientist Richard Dawkins and the gay rights advocate Peter Tetchel. A petition posted on Downing Street has received thousands of signatures.

Mr. Brown writes in Telegraph: “While Mr. Turing was treated in accordance with the laws of that time and we cannot reverse the course of history, the attitude towards him was extremely unfair and I am happy to have the opportunity to say how deeply I and we everyone regrets what happened to him. "

As we were told by the BBC .

And something happened to him called chemical castration, which was experimentally tried to rehabilitate gays in the UK at that time. After that, his chest began to grow. At the same time he was deprived of admission, as unreliable. Two years later, he ate an apple with cyanide.