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Alan Turing Accomplishments

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“We can see only a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” Alan Turing, a forgotten hero, said this when challenged with the prospect of technology that could think for itself. This figure hidden in the shadows of history has impacted every aspect of society. Because of his accomplishments in the realm of computing, the vast majority of the population has handled an electronic device. Turing, truly a catalyst for social change, who society tried to bury because of his homosexuality, a crime of gross indecency in the United Kingdom until 1967 is responsible for the electronic-reliant population the majority of humanity lives in today (“Alan Turing: Creator of modern computing”). Alan Turing changed the course of human history by using his mathematical genius to shorten World War II, designing the first electronic computer, and creating the Turing Test to determine if a machine can think. By helping to make the Bombe and break the code of German …show more content…

The man was a war hero, but the highly homophobic British society could not handle the fact that such a genius was a gay man. In 1952, he went to trial for the crime of ‘Gross Indecency contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885’ which stated it was illegal for physical homosexual acts to occur in public or private settings (Hodges 458). Instead of trying to cover up his true nature, Turing explicitly stated his guilt and was given the choice of either two years of hard labor or hormonal therapy. He chose hormonal therapy to avoid jail time and later went to Greece and Norway to escape the British judgement and show defiance against their society’s laws (“Alan Turing: Creator of modern computing”). Alan Turing gives homosexual people someone to admire because he never denied who he was and was a genius who shaped modern

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