Alan Turing honoured: Icon of change

Our world is as it is, or at least was, because of people like Alan Turing, the mathematician and computer pioneer who cracked the Nazi’s WWII Enigma code.

That achievement gave the Allies a significant advantage, one they made great sacrifices to keep secret. One estimate suggests his work shortened the war by four years and saved up to 21m lives.

Turing’s contribution has been recognised anew — he has been selected from a list of almost 1,000 scientists to appear on Britain’s new £50 note.

How ironic it is then that Britain, at this very moment, turns its back on the institution that Turing and his peers thought offered the best prospect of European stability. In a double irony, he was prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952.

Two years later, an inquest concluded his death from cyanide poisoning was suicide. He is also remembered through the “Alan Turing law” contained in a 2017 act, which serves as an amnesty law to pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.

How our world has changed and continues to change.