About My Handle
Why this handle? Do I think that I am the next Alan Turing? No, I am not the next Alan Turing.
A tribute
The reason for my handle is much more trivial. I think that not enough people know about Alan Turing, his history, what he has done for humanity, and how he was treated for this.
de.wikipedia.org)Although Turing was the central figure in the movies Enigma (2001, imdb.com) and The Imitation Game (2014, imdb.com), most people do not know about him.
Most computer scientists know him for the invention of the Turing machine (en.wikipedia.org) and his proof that the Halting problem (en.wikipedia.org) is - without loss of generality - not solvable.
Some people may know that he was a major figure in decrypting the code of the Enigma (en.wikipedia.org). Together with his team at Bletchley Park, they constructed the bombe (en.wikipedia.org). This, combined with the fact that the enigma was not able to encrypt a letter to itself, were the key ingredients that allowed the allies to decipher the german messages. In return, this discovery probably saved thousands, if not millions (bbc.com), of lives.
Some people may know him only through the Turing test (en.wikipedia.org), as a means to determine whether a machine shows intelligent behaviour.
If we read the original paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence (academic.oup.com), we see that Turing first introduces the "Imitation Game", where the interrogator has to infer the (biological) sex of the participants. I do not think that this is a coincidence, given the fact that Turing was homosexual. Combining this with the fact that he was engaged with Joan Clarke (en.wikipedia.org), I am inclined to think that this was his way to change society. He kept his homosexuality a secret of course, since homosexuality was illegal in England at this time. England legalized homosexuality in 1967 with the Sexual Offences Act 1967 (en.wikipedia.org).
This, sadly, came too late for Alan Turing. His homosexuality became public in 1952, he was prosecuted and convicted. He was given the choice between imprisonment and a hormone therapy, and he chose the latter. Turing was found dead in his apartment on the 8th of June 1954. The cause of death was an overdose cyanide. It is widely believed (although not undisputed) that Turing committed suicide. A half-eaten apple was found next to his bed. A plausible explanation is that he re-enacted the poisoning of Snow White, his favorite fairy tale.
