“Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.” – Alan Turing
Alan Turing was a British mathematician and logician most famous for his contributions in military intelligence for the Allied Forces in WWII. Born in London in 1912, Turing became enthralled with math as a child, and studied mathematics at Cambridge in his early career. He pursued his PhD at Princeton where he proved the central limit theorem, answered the Entscheidungsproblem, and proposed the Turing machine. He continued his work at the Code and Cypher School in England, until WII. During the war, Turing deciphered German code and provided over 80,000 messages per month. He received an OBE award for his efforts. He continued working on developing the first electronic computers at NPL, creating the first programming manual. In 1950, despite his work for the British government, He was turned over to authorities as homosexuality was a crime. He was placed under house arrest and chemically castrated until his suicide 2 years later.