I’m not a big fan of petitions, but in this case, it’s getting the media’s attention, and that’s good. CNN:
An online petition demanding a formal apology from the British government for its treatment of World War II code-breaker Alan Turing is gaining momentum.
Turing was subjected to chemical castration in 1952 after being found guilty of the charge of gross indecency for having a homosexual relationship, an illegal act at the time. He committed suicide two years later….
Turing was best known for inventing the Bombe, a code-breaking machine which deciphered messages encoded by German Enigma machines during World War II.
The messages provided the Allies with crucial information from the British government’s code-breaking headquarters in Bletchley Park where Turing worked full-time during the War.
More from Wikipedia, the guy was huge:
Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. He provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. In 1999 Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, stating: “The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.”