How Does Alan Turing Deserve The Honor Of Being On A Stamp?

Grady Koester

Mrs. Ragusky

Argumentative Essay

9 January 2023

The Great Alan Turing

“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human” Alan Turing wrote in 1950 talking about his famous Turing Test. His brother was in foster care, his father was in the British Civil Service stationed in India, and his mother was the daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras railways. His life begane of to a bad start with not seeing his father very much because he was usually traveling abroad. Even with these setbacks he still managed to be one of the greatest inventors of al time. Alan Turing should be the next person featured on a stamp because of his contribution to WWII, the perseverance

The first reason why Alan Turing deserves the honor of being on the stamp is because of what he did during WWII. Alan Turing was a major asset to the Allies during WWII. According to the International Churchill Society, Winston Churchill said that Alan Turing made the single biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill (The British prime minister during WWII) stated that Turing was extremely helpful in the war by cracking the enigma code which ended the war by around 2 to 4 years saving an estimated 14 million lives of people all around the world. Alan Turing also played a key part in the British code cracking team, “Alan Turing was responsible for breaking the Nazi Enigma code during World War II. His work gave the Allies the edge they needed to win the war in Europe” (Jacobson 2). Alan Turing created a machine to

One example of him pushing through the barrier is, “Turing was also openly gay and in the early 1950s was arrested and punished for his sexual orientation by the same government he served“ (GLSEN). Being gay was illegal in England during the 1950s and he was arrested and betrayed by the very people that he saved in WWII. This would not only affect him physically but mentally and the feeling of betrayal. Alan Turing was also forced against his will to do chemical castration, “On June 7, 1954, Alan Turing, a British mathematician who has since been acknowledged as one the most innovative and powerful thinkers of the 20th century — sometimes called the progenitor of modern computing — died as a criminal, having been convicted under Victorian laws as a homosexual and forced to endure chemical castration” (Cowell 3). Not only being forced to have chemical castration but feeling that you have been betrayed by your government who you helped could affect Turing's morale and make it harder to complete things. Another example of Alan Turing displaying perseverance is the Enigma machine when he was building the Turing Machine to crack the Enigma code he worked day and night for almost a year so the Allies could win the war. Alan Turing spent all of his time during the war trying to crack the Enigma machine. Doing that took lots of pure grit and toughness to stay mentally ready after months of constant