Alan Turing, OBE Claimed

Alan Turing OBE FRS born on 23 June 1912, may not be a household name but he excelled during World War II. He was an English computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. He lived for much of his early life in Guildford where his mother continued to reside.

Today, Alan Turing is regarded as the 'father' of modern computing, with most of the methods for machine computing -- such as programs -- having come from his various theories and 'tinkering' with the earliest computational machines. His fundamental approach to machines being able to 'imitate' human thought patterns and problem solving was captured in the movie The Imitation Game, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing. After Turing's success as part of the Allied Enigma cryptographic team in World War Two, which was able to successfully decode a majority of strategic encoded messages by the Nazis, he turned his experience to the task shaping the operational methods and building the first computers after the war. 

Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when by the Labouchere Amendment, "gross indecency" was criminal in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning. 

In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated." Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013. 

He died in Wilmslow, Cheshire on 7 June 1954