This unsung hero was also an openly gay man at
a time when the vast majority of gay people were deep in the closet. Codebreaker, the new documen- tary, is currently removing the veil that has obscured Turing and his dramatic contributions to history and modern technology. In addition, rising star Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the title detective on BBC’s Sherlock and the central villain in this summer’s Star Trek Into Darkness, has been signed to play Turing in another upcoming dramatized biography. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is among the
experts interviewed in Codebreaker who attest to Turing’s revolutionary genius. Turing began to de- velop computers from the theoretical to the actual in 1948, with the intention of “putting something like a human consciousness in an inorganic ma- chine.” In this regard, Turing is also considered to be the father of artificial intelligence. Sadly though, Turing would not live to see his
vision realized. He was arrested on charges of gross indecency with a younger man whom Turing had accused of burglary. The authorities’ investigation of the burglary led the discovery of said affair, mak- ing that the focus rather than the crime committed against him. Homosexuality was still illegal in Great Britain at the time and Turing was convicted in 1952. As a condition of his sentencing, he was forced to undergo chemical castration through hormone replacement therapy. This was, in a cruel irony, the same abusive technique that the Nazi doctors Tur- ing helped to defeat had subjected many Jewish men to in the concentration camps. The physiologi- cal and psychological effects, combined with the intense public disgrace, drove Turing to take his life in 1954 at the age of 41. The British government formally apologized for
its mistreatment of Turing, but not until 2009, 55 years after his death. Today, Turing is increasingly re- vered for his mathematical brilliance and advanced technological vision, his heroism in the fight against Nazi Germany and his pioneering honesty about his homosexuality. If he could be “naïve,” as one com- mentator describes Turing in Codebreaker, he can also be regarded more positively as optimistic, even if to a fault. Patrick Sammon, executive producer and creator
of the documentary Codebreaker, hadn’t heard of Turing before he came across his story while visiting the Smithsonian Institute in 2004. “It was a long road,” Sammon said of his film’s development during a recent phone interview withThe Rage Monthly. “I’m on my third career now, after being a TV reporter and documentary filmmaker for PBS, with another detour leading the Log Cabin Republicans.”
Above: Actor Ed Stoppard playing Alan Turing Below: The real Alan Turing
MARCH 2013 | RAGE monthly 29
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