Date: Fri, 16 Dec 1994 21:10:41 +0100 (NFT) From: Bj|rn Skolander Subject: Gay computer pioneer honoured Taken from the Guardian, Tuesday 13th December 1994. WARTIME "GENIUS" HONOURED AT LAST Manchester pays tribute to pioneer, writes David Ward. A wartime computer pioneer, wartime code-breaker and gay martyr was honoured yesterday when part of Manchester's new inner-city ring road was named after him. In grim drizzle, Michael Meacher MP, Labour transport spokesman, declared open Alan Turing Way, which runs near a gas works and alongside Manchester's new velodrome. Describing Turing as a "real local genius", Mr Meacher unveiled a plaque and said: "It is fitting that we should pay him proper credit and honour." The event marked the 40th anniversary of the suicide of Turing, who began a revolution in information technology and helped win the last war. In 1937, Turing published his seminal paper On Computable Numbers, one of the century's most significant mathematical papers. Two years later he joined the government's Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Oxfordshire, helping to crack the German navy's Enigma code. This made it easier for allied convoys to dodge U-boats in the north Atlantic. Churchill admired Turing's work, and he was awarded the OBE. After the war, Turing continued his computer work at Manchester University, becoming director of Madam, the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine. In 1954, police investigating a burglary at his home also looked at Turing's lifestyle, and charged him with gross indecency. Reluctantly, he pleaded guilty and was put on probation, on condition that he was treated with hormones. Shortly afterwards, he killed himself by eating an apple impregnated with cyanide. He was 42. ----------