Oddbean new post about login | logout Alan Turing was a mathematician & cryptographer who was a leading code-breaker in the team that decrypted Nazi Germany’s Enigma machine during WWII. He inspired modern computing & what became AI. Instead of being hailed as a genius & hero, Turing was convicted as a homosexual & forced to endure chemical castration. He died by suicide at 41 in 1954. The British government didn’t apologize until 2009 & Queen Elizabeth II finally pardoned him in 2013. #history #science https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/081/146/154/852/505/original/576d10bf43e4ecd9.jpeg
@b5cdaf1a even better - he’s now on the £50 note, along with his equations to define a Turing machine (as others have described in the comments) https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/081/420/645/165/876/original/487f8b25890e5ff2.png
@b5cdaf1a weird I just watched The imitation game with my 9-year-old last night.
@b5cdaf1a such a sad story :( very similar to Oscar Wilde's, who was imprisoned for two years for his omosexuality and probably died earlier than his time 'cause of jail time. If the horror of their suffering wasn't enough, it makes me so mad to think the rest of us got robbed of potentially amazing discoveries and inventions by Turing, and of great literary works by Wilde
@b5cdaf1a there's also this guy, who created the first chatbot inspired by turing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum
@b5cdaf1a inspiring
@b5cdaf1a Stephen Fry once asked Steve Jobs if the bite in the apple logo was a reference to Turing. Jobs replied "God we wish it were. It's just a coincidence."
