10 LGBTQ+ Inventors and Entrepreneurs Who have Changed the Technology Landscape

You can’t make a list of influential figures in technology without including the “Progenitor of Modern Computing,” Alan Turing. He is most well known for helping to break the enigma code during WWII, but his hypothesis and designs influenced computing and AI as we know it today. 

He hypothesized and designed the Universal Turing Machine, which identified the limits of human computation. His later design for the Automatic Computing Engine was the first complete design for an all-purpose digital computer. He was one of the first people to put forward the idea of AI, believing that the brain is in part a digital computing machine. In 1950 he created the Turing Test, which would test whether an artificial computer is thinking.

Unfortunately, his life was derailed when he was convicted by Britain in 1952 for being gay and sentenced to 12 months of hormone “therapy.” Despite this, he continued to work, delving into artificial life. He wouldn’t finish this potentially groundbreaking work. His life was tragically cut short when he was found dead of cyanide poisoning in his home. It is still unknown whether his death was an accident or intentional.

Turing would never receive the acknowledgment or apologies he deserved in his lifetime. His mistreatment was finally acknowledged by the British Government in 2009 when Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly apologized for his “utterly unfair treatment,” and he was later pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013.

Today Turing is recognized as one of the most influential figures in Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, and Philosophy. 

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