Today would be Alan Turing's 100th birthday. Turing was one of
the leaders at Bletchley Park, working as a codebreaker during
the war, working on the cryptanalysis of German's Enigma
machine. Probably the man who helped England the most when all
was but lost to the enemy during WWII, ended up persecuted for
its sexual orientation, after the war. His conviction for
indecency cost him his security clearance and job for the
Government Communications Headquarters. He was forced to undergo
chemical castration. And he commited suicide (although some
believe it was an accident). And to think the top German
scientists got free passes to America thanks to Operation
Paperclip, while England did nothing but to hunt Turing. Turing
gave us the modern computer, thanks to his design of a stored-
program computer. When I was first introduced to computers, back
in early 80s (and I was late to this!) our teacher made a point
of showing the class the works of both Turing and Von Neumann.
But most of all, I still believe he is re