Alan M Turing and colleagues work on the Ferranti Mark I Computer in the United Kingdom in 1951. Science & Society Picture Library via Getty Images
It amazes me that I have not heard the name Alan Turing before 2014-15.
Here is a man whose contribution to the world as we know it today is HUGE.
Here is a man whose contributions were kept secret by government at the highest levels for many years,
whose contribution to ending WWII ( by deciphering the famed Enigma Code ) is acknowledged to have shortened the war by about two years and therefore saved millions of lives.
It's not just that Turing's work was worthy of a Nobel Prize.
He went far beyond that. Turing was a true genius of the highest order.
Alan Turing should be known in the way that those other giants of science are known - Einstein, Newton and Darwin .
Instead he was prosecuted for being a homosexual and subjected to "chemical castration" in 1953.
A year later, at the age of 41, Alan Turing committed suicide.
This is a story that needed to be told.
The film The Imitation Game does just that - albeit with some glaring inaccuracies and embellishments.
Despite the embellishments it is a very enjoyable movie.
The sort that makes you go home and start an investigation all of your own about this genius of a man.
The sort that makes you shake your head in wonder about the social norms of the time and realise how times have changed in 50 or 60 years - my lifetime !!!
The name Alan Turing should be recognised in the way that the name Albert Einstein is recognised.
Let's hope, thanks to this film, that it is !
