Alan Turing: Scientists call for pardon for codebreaker

[eridani]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20722581

Some of Britain's leading scientists have called on the government to grant a posthumous pardon to Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing.

Turing was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 after acknowledging a sexual relationship with a man.

Professor Stephen Hawking, astronomer royal Lord Rees and the Royal Society's Sir Paul Nurse are among 11 signatories to a letter in the Daily Telegraph.

They urge David Cameron to "formally forgive this British hero".

The scientists said: "We write in support of a posthumous pardon for Alan Turing, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the modern era.

"He led the team of Enigma codebreakers at Bletchley Park, which most historians agree shortened the Second World War.

"Yet successive governments seem incapable of forgiving his conviction for the then crime of being a homosexual, which led to his suicide, aged 41."

[dipsydoodle]

1. Yes he should be pardoned.

Should've been done years ago.

[CBGLuthier]

2. He should be pardoned but then again so should all the people

terrorized under the bigoted laws of the day not just the famous ones who did something for society.

I am also in the small minority who is not 100% certain he committed suicide rather than just a careless accident but that does not matter here.

[rhett o rick]

4. I agree with your first sentence. Short of that, they should pardon him in the name of the

other victims of these bigoted laws.

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. Rec. Grrrr............. n/t

[joeybee12]

5. Can't happen soon enough...knr

[Fearless]

6. You'd think this would have been done years ago

[Jim Lane]

7. Pardon him? Hell, they should put him on a stamp.

His work saved an incalculable number of lives.