Happy Birthday, Alan Turing

A belated birthday shoutout to Alan Turing, the reason, as Cory Doctorow reminded us, that you're sitting at a computer, right now, reading this sentence. Please take a moment to thank a faggot for the digital age.

As you may know, Turing was prosecuted for a same-sex relationship, sentenced to jailtime or forced estrogen injections (he chose the drugs), and driven to suicide in 1954 at age 42. Had he lived to see semiconductor computers, what additional contributions might he have made?

I was reminded of this by the silly comment thread on Cosmic Variance. The post itself was sweet: Sean musing about how CA's marriage equality makes him recall, misty-eyed, his own wedding. The comment thread included the usual slippery slope bullshit arguments, plus a "Stick to your posts on physics, Sean."

Nope, no connection between math/sci/tech and queers. None at all.