# Alan Turing Alan Turing (1912–1954) was the British mathematician who laid the theoretical foundations of computer science and posed the founding question of [[Artificial Intelligence]]. His 1936 concept of the "Turing machine" formalized computation itself; during WWII he was central to breaking the German Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park, work credited with shortening the war. His 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" asked "can machines think?" and proposed the Turing Test, framing AI's ambition for the next seventy years. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexuality, then criminal in Britain, subjected to chemical castration, stripped of his security clearance, and died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning, generally ruled a suicide. He received a posthumous royal pardon in 2013, and "Turing's Law" (2017) pardoned others convicted under the same laws. The field's highest honor, the Turing Award, bears his name. His persecution is a recurring reference point in histories of state treatment of LGBTQ people — relevant to the vault's [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] as a case of a national hero destroyed by the criminalization of homosexuality. ## See Also - Turing Test — his enduring contribution to AI - History of Artificial Intelligence — which he opens - [[Artificial Intelligence]] — the discipline hub