Nearly five thousand people have signed an online petition to the British government calling for an official apology to be issued over the treatment of Alan Turing.
Turing was one of the founders of the modern computing industry and pioneered many of the systems of coding and computational analysis in use today.
However, in 1952 he was tried and convicted of gross indecency after admitting an affair with another man. He was sentenced to chemical castration and depression over its effects were a significant factor in he suicide two years later.
Now programmer and founder of Electric Cloud John Graham-Cumming has set up a petition to demand an apology for the sentence and in less than three weeks nearly 5,000 people have signed up, making it the most popular technology petition.
“Turing's work has affected us all. He's best know for his involvement in Second World War code breaking (especially for helping to break Enigma) and if all he had done was that we would be grateful,” said Graham-Cumming.
“But Turing was also a critical pioneer of computer science. He defined a theoretical model of computers (at a time when 'computer' meant a person, often a woman, who computed numbers) that holds true today. He suggested how we might determine whether a computer was sentient (with the Turing Test).”
“Turing's death should remind us how prejudice ruins and degrades.”
Under the rules of the 10 Downing Street web site any petitions which collect over 500 signatures will receive an official statement. The government recently gave a special award to those stil living members of the British code-breaking team.