Alan Turing

Here’s a nice piece by Radiolab on Alan Turing, who was convicted of “Gross Indecency” in England. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what Oscar Wilde was convicted of, both of them a result of the Labouchere Amendment which was part of the Criminal Law Amendment of 1885.

He didn’t go to prison like Wilde but instead endured chemical castration via estrogen and eventually committed suicide by eating an arsenic laced apple.

In the meantime he invented computers and won WWII. (I’m not overstating either claim.)

Imagine what he might have given humanity if we weren’t such homophobic assholes as a culture.

But hey, he’s got a stamp now.

Helen Boyd
