Alan Turing

While studying at the 'Sherborne School', Alan befriended classmate Christopher Morcom, who the former fell in love with. The blossoming friendship abruptly ended when Morcom died of bovine tuberculosis.

In 1941, he proposed to Joan Clarke, who was his colleague at Bletchley Park. The two got engaged, but the marriage was soon called off when Turing decided it was unfair getting married to Clarke despite being homosexual.

At the age of 39, Alan got into a relationship with 19 year old, Arnold Murray. During a burglary investigation at the mathematician's house, personal details about his homosexuality came into light, and Alan was arrested on charges of indecency.

Alan Mathison Turing was born to Julius Mathison and Ethel Sara on June 23, 1912, in Paddington, London. Julius was employed with the 'Indian Civil Service', and with his wife, he had another son, John.

He pursued his elementary education from 'St Michael's', later studying at the 'Sherborne School' in Dorset, starting from 1926.

In 1931, he began attending 'King's College', at the 'University of Cambridge', graduating in mathematics three years later with top scores.

He began pursuing a fellowship from 'King's College' in 1935, during which he published the paper, 'On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem'.

It was in this paper that he drew references from Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel's research to develop simple imaginary devices which came to be called 'Turing machines'.

In September 1938, Turing took up a part-time job at the 'Government Code and Cypher School' ('GC&CS'), an organization that specialized in breaking war codes. The 'GC&CS' was located at Bletchley Park during the World War II, and it was here that Alan was accompanied by fellow code-breaker Dilly Knox.

The young mathematician was appointed to break the codes sent by German officials, during World War II, through the radio machine, 'Enigma'. In 1939, the 'Polish Cipher Bureau' had shared with the 'GC&CS', their method of trying to break the codes.

Knox and Alan tried to develop the complex Polish techniques into a simpler and more workable method. The indicators referred to by the Polish were not too reliable, since they could be altered at any point of time by the Germans. Turing thus tried using decoding methods, and developed a device known as the 'bombe'.

In December, 1939, he developed a decrypting technique using statistical analysis, and called it the 'Banburismus'. The 'Banburismus' had the potential to decipher the 'Enigma' codes, which were more complex than those used by other warring countries.

The first bombe began functioning in Bletchley Park, on March 18, 1940, and it was built to electrically arrive at logical conclusions about what the Enigma indicators meant.

This scientist is known for having pioneered the concept of modern-day computers, by introducing the idea of a ‘Turing Machine’, which is simple, and yet capable of solving any form of algorithms that can be measured and quantified.