LONDON — Stephen Hawking and other eminent scientists called Friday for the British government to pardon computer pioneer Alan Turing, who helped win World War II but was later prosecuted for homosexuality.
In a letter published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Hawking and 10 others urged Prime Minister David Cameron “formally to forgive the iconic British hero.”
A Turing Machine
FORGIVE?The arrogance of the Brits and the submissiveness of scientists combine to induce nausea in me this morning.
Perhaps the Royal Academy should condemn the Queen and her government for their heinus acts against a great scientist?
Turing worked at Bletchley Park, the wartime code-breaking center, where he helped crack Nazi Germany’s secret codes by creating the “Turing bombe,” a forerunner of modern computers. (pictured at the right)
Turing’s math, after his death, was also critical to the development of nuclear weapons and later to finding the damned things after they were accidentally dropped from US airplanes during the cold war. The power of this math was so greeat that it was classified until the 1990s. Turing’s proteges ahd to hide their powerful knowledge in order to get jobs in academe or industry. Today, that math is recognized in the the name of the
Turing Test” .. a method for deciding when computers cross the line into intelligence and the Turing Prize, the highest award in computer science. Last year Judeah Pearl won the won the Turing Prize for showing how Turing’s math also known as Bayesian or Causal Math, could be used (and is) to solce problems in economist, astronomy, physics, genetics … the fabric of modern life.
And now the Brits want to forgive Turing?
(from Huff Post) After the war, Turing was prosecuted for having sex with a man, stripped of his security clearance and forcibly treated with female hormones. He killed himself in 1954 at age 41 by eating an apple laced with cyanide.
Sex between men remained illegal in Britain until 1967.
In 2009, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a public apology on behalf of the government for Turing’s “inhumane” treatment, saying: “We’re sorry, you deserved so much better.”
Wouldn’t a Lordship Be more Appropriate?
In a country the knights and dames pop singers and cult entertainers, wouldn’t a Lordship be far better than an apology? T
John Richard Krebs, Baron Krebs FRS is a renowned English zoologist researching in the field of behavioural ecology of birds. He is currently the Principal of Jesus College, Oxford University. Wikipedia
he
House of Lords is made up of 881 Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal. There are currently 26 Lords Spiritual who sit in the Lords by virtue of their ecclesiastical role in the established Church of England.[4] The Lords Temporal make up the rest of the membership; of these, the majority are life peers who are appointed by the Monarch on the advice of the
Prime Minister, or on the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. (wikipedia).The current list of the Lords has 881 entries with title like Baroness Adams of Craigielea, Baroness Campbell of Loughborough(sports coach), Lord Adebowale, Viscount Allenby of Megiddo, 2nd Baron Chorley(Geography), Baron Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, The Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone, Lord Wilson of Dinton (represents Murdock), Baron Broers (an electrical engineer), Baron May of Oxford (biologist), and The Rt Hon Sebastian Newbold Coe, Baron Coe (Olympic medal winner, track). On this list are anh ornythologist (see to left), an expert in Islamic law, scions of the corporate media , head of a chain of pubs, a zoologist, a real estate magnate and a dentist. Would a great computer scientist hurt?
Of course Turing is now dead and never was a Lord by inheritance. So, if the Queen made Turing a Lord, one assumes his position would not need to be hereditary! Perhaps I will send this essay to Lord Krebs, president-elect of the British Science Association?