WWII code-breaker Alan Turing has been given a posthumous royal pardon for a 61-year-old conviction for being gay. Dr Turing, who was pivotal in breaking the Enigma code, was chemically castrated following his conviction in 1952.
Alan Turing revealed he was gay to the authorities by falling for an "old police trick," New Statesman legal writer David Allen Green reports.
Reporting a theft to police in 1952, Turing was forced to fabricate details of the account to conceal his relationship with a man.
Asked to repeat the account a week later by police, Turing was unable to accurately remember some of those fabricated details, Allen Green writes.
On realising his lies had been exposed, the brilliant mathematician produced a five-page letter admitting untruths as well as describing graphic details of his homosexual relationship.
The statement was enough for police to convict Turing and arrest his partner.
WWII codebreaker whose work may have shortened the war by two years was persecuted for being gay but pardoned after a long campaign.
During WW2, Alan Turing worked at the Government Code and Cypher School where he devised techniques which cracked the German Enigma code.