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'Turing arguably made a greater contribution to defeating the Nazis than Eisenhower or Churchill'
Alan Turing
Richard Dawkins wants apology for gay genius Turing
Richard Dawkins has added his voice to the campaign for an official apology for Alan Turing, the code-breaking genius and father of the modern programmable computer who committed suicide in 1954 after his prosecution for homosexuality.
The author of The God Delusion joins the more than 2,500 names on an online petition calling for the government to recognise the "consequences of prejudice" that destroyed Turing's career and life at the age of 41. He said Turing was driven to despair by repressive, religion-influenced laws and that an apology would "send a signal to the world which needs to be sent".
Writing on his website yesterday, Professor Dawkins said: "As the pivotal intellect in the breaking of the German enigma codes, Turing arguably made a greater contribution to defeating the Nazis than Eisenhower or Churchill. Thanks to Turing and his 'Ultra' colleagues at Bletchley Park, allied generals in the field were consistently, over long periods of the war, privy to detailed German plans before the German generals had time to implement them.
"After the war, when Turing's role was no longer top secret, he should have been knighted and feted as a saviour of his nation. Instead, this gentle, stammering, eccentric genius was destroyed, for a 'crime', committed in private, which harmed nobody. He was offered a choice between two years in prison and a course of hormone injections which could be said to amount to chemical castration, and which would cause him to grow breasts. His final, private choice was an apple which he had injected with cyanide."
