Sir, – Everyone these days has at least some familiarity with the expression “Turing Machine” and the associated concept of machine intelligence, so Karlin Lillington’s piece on the Alan Turing session of the Euroscience Open Forum (Business+Technology, July 19th) offered a timely reminder both of the exceptional talents of Turing and the disgraceful treatment he received for deviating from the social mores of his time.
Her call for a posthumous pardon for Turing deserves support, so might I suggest that the various relevant learned bodies in philosophy, logic, computer science and mathematics – here, in the UK and further afield – put together a formal petition calling for Turing’s rehabilitation? – Yours, etc,