deathmathematica:

Alan Turing: Turing’s suicide was perhaps the most tragic end to one of history’s most brilliant and creative mathematicians.

From Stephen Kettle:

“Alan Turing was one of the most important and original Englishmen of the twentieth century who did more than any other to make possible the breaking of the German Enigma codes at the secret Station X at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. It was said by Winston Churchill that Turing’s work was the greatest single contribution to victory in the Second World War. It is agreed by historians that the work of the codebreakers shortened the war by at least two years, saving countless lives.
Turing is also regarded as the intellectual parent of computer science.

Alan Mathison Turing was born on 23rd June 1912 at the Colonnade hotel, Paddington, London.
At school, despite his brilliance, Turing was poorly served by those appointed to teach him and his tendency to follow his own train of thought infuriated his teachers. Turing was a free thinker, openly atheist and unapologetically homosexual who had unconventional habits and an unkempt appearance.
Turing took refuge in pure mathematics and the work of Einstein and in 1930 he won a scholarship to Kings College, Cambridge. He was elected a Fellow of Kings in 1935 for his works on probability theory. He later moved to Princeton University where his studies led him to toy with the idea of building a machine that could think.
Turing moved to work full time at Bletchley Park when war was declared in 1939 working on Naval Enigma in hut 8 which proved a turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic. In 1945 he was awarded the OBE in recognition of his work with the Government Codes and cipher School at Bletchley. (later became GCHQ)

Turing was prosecuted for his homosexuality and was chemically castrated by means of injections of the female hormone estrogen to reduce his libido. His trial was reported in the most lurid terms in the press and destroyed his career. On the 7th June 1954 aged just forty-one, he was found dead after eating an apple laced with potassium cyanide.
The coroners report was suicide.
For more information on Alan Turing please visit www.turing.org.uk “

And a contributor to philosophy.

(via likeelectricthroughtheground)