Wartime codebreaker gets belated apology

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This article was published 12/09/2009 (5956 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LONDON — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown offered a posthumous apology Friday for the “inhumane” treatment of Alan Turing, the World War II codebreaker who committed suicide in 1954 after being prosecuted for homosexuality and forcibly treated with female hormones.

The mathematician helped crack Nazi Germany’s Enigma encryption machine — a turning point in the war — and is considered a father of modern computing.

In 1952, however, Turing was convicted of gross indecency for having sex with a man and offered a choice between prison and “chemical castration” — the injection of female hormones to suppress his libido. His security clearance was revoked and he was no longer allowed to work for the government.

Two years later, he killed himself at age 41 by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

As Britain marks the 70th anniversary of the September 1939 start of the war — remembered as its “finest hour” — Brown said Turing “deserved so much better” than the treatment he received from postwar society.

“It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War II could well have been very different,” Brown said. “He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war.”

Brown said Turing was “in effect, tried for being gay.” Homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967.

“The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely,” Brown said.

“We’re sorry, you deserved so much better.”

Brown’s apology follows an online petition that drew more than 30,000 supporters, including novelist Ian McEwan, scientist Richard Dawkins and actor and comedian Stephen Fry.

Computer scientist John Graham-Cumming said he started the petition campaign because Turing “wasn’t as well known in Britain as I think he deserved to be, as a hero of the Second World War and a great mathematician.”

Working at the wartime codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park, Turing helped crack Germany’s secret codes by creating the “Turing bombe,” a forerunner of modern computers, to help reveal the settings for the Enigma machine.

Turing also did pioneering work on artificial intelligence, developing the “Turing Test” to measure whether a machine can think. One of the most prestigious honours in computing, the $250,000 Turing Prize, is named for him.

— The Associated Press