Meet Alan Turing, gay mathematician to appear on British banknote

the mathematician Alan Turing has been chosen to stamp British £50 banknotes from 2021 onwards by the Bank of England. He was chosen from 988 possibilities nominated by the British public. Alan’s main achievement was the electromechanical bomb, equipment capable of translating German codes during World War II. This helped England anticipate Nazi attacks at the time and later made him recognized as one of the fathers of artificial intelligence and computing. However, his story wasn’t glamorous like that – in fact, it had some tragic facts.

Even after helping the country to win the second period of war, Alan was brutally persecuted by the State. The reason for this was his sexual orientation: he was gay. Such intolerance was so great that the mathematician was condemned to chemical castration with the justification that he had practiced “homosexual activity”, in 1952. But more than a punishment, the attitude was a way of resisting the rules of the British government already that the other option for punishment was to remain a recluse from society.

It is worth remembering that the attitude of having a relationship with someone of the other sex was a crime in the United Kingdom until 1982. This means that, when assuming a homoaffective relationship, the individual was subject to either prison, chemical castration or unpaid forced labor. The act of chemically castrating someone is so serious and invasive that Alan ended up dying in 1954 from cyanide, a substance present in the chemical process of blocking testosterone, at the age of 41.

Even with the tragic story coming to light, the official demonstration in England only took place in December 2013, 59 years after his death. THE The Royal Prerogative of Compassion granted pardon to the mathematician after the request of the Minister of Justice, Chris Grayling🇧🇷 He defended that Alan’s life was a great protest that saved thousands of people, as reported by G1.

Read Also: My husband doesn't want me to work

Alan’s story became even better known after the film’s production. “The Imitation Game”released in 2014. The feature tells the trajectory of the mathematician from the moment he was hired by British intelligence agency MI6 exactly to crack Nazi codes. In the plot, he was played by the actor benedict cumberbatch🇧🇷