Alan Turing, mathematician, marathon runner, and father of computing

Alan Turing was an avid cyclist and marathon runner, and the mathematician who conceived of artificial intelligence. He built the world's first computer at the WWII code-breaking centre of Bletchley Park, enabling the break of the German naval code, Ultra. Many believe this breakthrough shortened the war by a couple of years. Math and computing science were not his only areas of knowledge. For his groundbreaking work on morphogenesis, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. 

Sadly, although Turing's nation used his skills in war time, the government treated him shockingly afterwards. In 1948, he'd been named Deputy Director of the computer laboratory at Manchester University, where he became the first person to use a computer for mathematical research. 

The trouble began in Manchester in 1952. While investigating a theft of money from Turing, the police learned of a homosexual affair which he did not attempt to hide, though homosexual activity was illegal. He was tried for gross indecency and found guilty. To avoid a prison sentence, he agreed to take estrogen injections. 

In the post-war period, Alan Turing was still working for GCHQ, with Hugh Alexander, whom he'd known at Bletchley Park. However, under the cold war alliance with the Americans, who deemed homosexuals ineligible for security clearance, his own government stripped him of the clearance he'd had since the war. 

In June of 1954, he was found by his housekeeper, dead of cyanide poisoning. The presence of a half-eaten apple and traces of cyanide on his fingers led to speculation that he'd died accidentally, while carrying out an experiment. However, the coroner found the death to be suicide. Yet it seemed strange; for one thing, he'd just enrolled in an upcoming conference. At the time of his death, this talented thinker was only forty-two years old.

The Turing Award for Computing was established in 1966, and later a Turing monument was put up in Manchester. In 1998, his birthplace in London was marked with a blue plaque, according to the custom. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth granted him a full pardon for his former "crime."