Gay WWII Hero Death Not Suicide (Turing)

Gay WWII Hero Death Not Suicide

The 100th birthday of the late Alan Turing, the gay British mathematician and computer theorist whose work decoding the infamous German Enigma machine is often credited with winning WWII, may have been overshadowed by Pride celebrations in the U.S. today but both Google and researchers in his native country didn't forget.

Today Google honored Turing, who died in 1954 and is often called the father of artificial intelligence, with an animated "Turning machine" Google doodle. A Turing machine, according to PC magazine's Damon Poeter, was not an actual computer but rather "a hypothetical one that still serves as a fundamental tool for understanding how algorithms, computer programming, and computing itself works." (Poeter included clips of Turing's 1948 essay "Intelligent Machinery" which explains this conceptual computer, a fascinating read for math geeks and gay history buffs for sure.)

Meanwhile, at a conference today in Oxford, England, professor Jack Copeland, an expert on Alan Turing, told surprised visitors that Turing's 1954 death was not a suicide, as has widely been assumed. According to a fascinating account in BBC News, Copeland questioned the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest into Turing's death, calling it insufficient to rule the death a suicide.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/military/2012/06/23/gay-wwii-hero-death-not-suicide

I know the headline is sensationalistic, but it's a direct copy of the headline of the article.