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Alan Turing was a mathematician and invented the first computer the Turing machine. He was also a homosexual. Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in Paddington, London. He was born to upper-middle-class British parents Julius Mathison Turing and Ethel Sara Stoney. Julius was a British member of the Indian Civil service. He and Turing’s mother met and married in India. Ethel was the daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras railways. When Turing was one, his mother left and rejoined with his father in India leaving Alan in England with friends and family. He was sent to school but then was taken out after a few months for not obtaining benefit. Turing then went to Hazlehurst Preparatory School where he was an average to good student in most of the subjects. He was interested in chess and also joined the debating society. In 1926 he completed his Common Entrance Examination and entered Sherborne School. That was also the year of the general strike. Turning road his bike sixty miles to the school from his home. He later was to become a fine athlete of almost Olympic level. Turing found it difficult to fit in at a public school but his mother insisted on a public education. He was criticized for his handwriting and struggled at English. He even struggled in mathematics because he was more interested in his own ideas for problem solving other then what his teachers taught him. Turing won almost every mathematic prize at Sherborne. He had a close friendship with Christopher Morcom; together they worked on scientific ideas. But Morcom’s death in 1930 left Turing upset. He then entered King’s College in 1931 to study mathematics. King’s College was an easier place for unconventional people. In 1933, Turing joined the anti-war movement. He graduated in 1934 and in 1935 he attended Max Newman’s advanced course on the foundations of mathematics.
In 1936, Turing published On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entsheidungsproblem. Turing also wrote other...