Alan Turing at the time of his election to Fellowsh...

Alan Tur­ing, at the time of his elec­tion to Fel­low­ship of the Royal Soci­ety. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yes­ter­day, June 23, 2012, was the one hun­dredth anniver­sary of the birth of Alan Tur­ing. If you’ve never heard of him, you need to know.

He is one of the rea­sons we are able to com­mu­ni­cate on the Inter­net. With­out Alan Tur­ing, the mod­ern com­puter would not exist.

He is one of the rea­sons Hitler did not con­quer Eng­land. With­out Alan Tur­ing, the Nazis may have won the Sec­ond World War.

He was a pio­neer in the field of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, before there were com­put­ers capa­ble of even approach­ing the idea. With­out Alan Tur­ing, I could not have writ­ten my first pub­lished novel.

He was a genius and a war hero. He was a sci­en­tist and a Fel­low of the Royal Soci­ety. He died in 1954, at the age of 41, from cyanide poi­son­ing. His death was ini­tially ruled a sui­cide, and has been so viewed for 58 years. Yes­ter­day, at a con­fer­ence at Oxford, his­to­rian Jack Copeland ques­tioned that conclusion.

His death may have been acci­den­tal. Whether Tur­ing killed him­self, or whether he died from care­less­ness, either way, his death mat­ters. His life mat­tered. The world is poorer for his loss. You should care about this, for his life says some­thing — I don’t know what, but some­thing — about the soci­ety we live in and the world we are cre­at­ing. (more…)