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<div><b>MATHEMATICIAN IN THE MAKING</b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div>As a child, I was fascinated by numbers, puzzles and coding. I was curious and wanted to learn all I could about maths and science.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>I was sent to boarding school when I was six. I was shy and didn't seem to fit in. This meant that I didn’t make friends easily. Actually, numbers became my friends. I could see their patterns and that made me feel safe and sure of myself.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div><img src="https://cdn.builder.io/o/assets%2Fb3b13b7f131f44b8b9040dab74852379%2Ff5ede1c79ac04db88b693a446f3b0234?alt=media&amp;token=4a935157-9f89-46cc-9a3b-5b6b28ef5a55&amp;apiKey=b3b13b7f131f44b8b9040dab74852379" alt=""><img src="https://cdn.builder.io/api/v1/image/assets%2Fb3b13b7f131f44b8b9040dab74852379%2Ff4c40e74f08244b0a1fd17d176b1714e" alt="" style="width: 451.467px; height: 307px;"><br><img src="https://cdn.builder.io/o/assets%2Fb3b13b7f131f44b8b9040dab74852379%2Ff5ede1c79ac04db88b693a446f3b0234" alt=""><br><br>I made few friends at school. In my own world of numbers, it didn't factor much. That was until I met a boy called Christopher Morcom. I was very attracted to him. It was the first time I had felt like this and it was both exciting and terrifying.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>When Christopher died from <b>tuberculosis </b>during our last term at school, I was totally lost. I retreated into my world of numbers, codes and puzzles.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>In 1931, I won a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge. Here, I found like-minded people who shared my passions. In 1936, I published a paper that became the foundation for computer science as it is known today. I was in my element.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div><b>CODE BREAKER</b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div>War was coming and The War Office enlisted me. I joined a secret team at Bletchley Park and set to work, to crack the code for the German Enigma machines, which could change everything.</div><div><br></div><div>Our work centred on an <b>electromechanical </b>machine (the ‘Bombe’) that was capable of breaking the Germans’ messages. It wasn’t easy, but we were able to decode more than 84,000 messages a month, and this spurred us on.</div><div><br></div><div><img src="https://cdn.builder.io/api/v1/image/assets%2Fb3b13b7f131f44b8b9040dab74852379%2F5112fa8f9ae2431290e9116cccfefacf" alt="" style="width: 448px; height: 336px;"><br><br></div><div>It was at Bletchley Park that I met Joan Clarke, who was part of our team. I wondered if it was love and proposed marriage. Before long, I realised that what I really wanted was male affection. Being gay in Britain was illegal at this time, so it was frightening. But keeping secrets was something I was good at doing.</div><div><br></div><div>When the war ended, I had to fit into ‘normal’ life again. I began work at Manchester University, focusing on <b>artificial intelligence</b>. I believed that a machine could think, and I wrote a paper proposing a test called ‘The Imitation Game’. Some saw my findings as science fiction, but others saw my work as the way of the future.&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div><b>TRAGIC TIMES</b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div>I became involved with a man called Arnold Murray. But because sexual activity between two men was considered a crime, I was arrested for gross indecency. The authorities required me to go through chemical-hormonal treatment, which subdued the feelings I had for men.&nbsp;</div><div><br><img src="https://cdn.builder.io/api/v1/image/assets%2Fb3b13b7f131f44b8b9040dab74852379%2F9c821e89cd154665ad5e990aadf097fe" alt="" style="width: 450.281px; height: 295px;"> &nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>I had been able to break complex codes and secret <b>ciphers</b>, but I could not break the code for my own future. There didn't seem to be a place for me in this world, especially when the world lacked tolerance and acceptance. People can be unkind. Machines do not have the capacity to be kind or unkind. That is the difference.</div><div style="text-align: center; "><b><br></b></div><div><div style="text-align: center; "><b>GLOSSARY</b></div><div style="text-align: center; "><b><br></b></div><div><b>Tuberculosis </b>– potentially serious infectious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Electromechanical </b>– relating to or denoting a mechanical device that is electrically operated.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Artificial intelligence</b> – when a computer program or machine has the ability to think and learn.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Ciphers </b>– secret or disguised ways of writing.</div><div><br></div><div style="text-align: center; "><b>LEGACY AND RECOGNITION</b></div><div><ul><li>Alan Turing died from eating a poisoned apple. His death was ruled a suicide, but there are now question marks about how he died. At the time of his death, the public had no idea that he had contributed so much to the war effort.</li><li>In 2013, Alan Turing received a rare royal pardon for his conviction of ‘gross indecency’ (for being gay) under the homophobic laws that existed during his lifetime. Turing’s Law came into effect in 2017. It posthumously pardoned men who had been convicted under the homophobic laws.</li><li>There are statues of Alan Turing in London, Manchester, and Bletchley Park, to remind the world of the contributions he made to computing and computer science.</li><li>The Turing Test is still used by researchers and scientists today, to measure artificial intelligence.</li><li>The Turing Award, considered equivalent to the Nobel Prize, is offered annually by the Association for Computing Machinery.</li><li>Alan Turing was ranked by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.</li><li>An Alan Turing version of Monopoly, inspired by Bletchley Park, was released in 2012 to celebrate the centennial of his birth.</li></ul><div style="text-align: center;"><div><b>IMAGE CAPTIONS AND CREDITS</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Turing running a race in 1946</i></b>, Alamy<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Bombe Rebuild</i></b>, Ted Coles, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons<b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Alan Turing Memorial</i></b>, Johnson Cameraface, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, Flikr</p></div></div></div></div><div><br></div>

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