Alan Turing was a code breaker for the allies in WWII who laid the mathematical foundation of all modern computer science. Had it not been for Turing's cryptography work during World War II, the outcome of the war might have been very different, and computers as we know them today might not exist!

In 1939 Alan Turing set to work at Bletchley Park with a team of code breakers to defeat the German Enigma machine. The effort ultimately resulted in the design and construction of the Bombe machine (based on an earlier electromechanical cypher machine developed in Poland) that is widely considered to be the first digital computer ever constructed. The Bombe machine was successful in breaking German codes and integral to the Allied victory over Germany.

However, Turing was gay and in 1952 it came out that Turing was a homosexual, after a lover helped an accomplice to rob Turing's house. Turing was arrested and convicted of gross indecency, and given a choice of prison or chemical castration. Turing choose castration. On June 7, 1954, at forty two years old, Alan Mathison Turing killed himself by swallowing cyanide.

The post-war treatment of Alan Turing was disgraceful, and he deserves recognition both as a hero of WWII, and as the inventor of digital computing.

We, the undersigned, ask that Turing's birthday, June 23rd, should be made a holiday to celebrate his accomplishments in computing and cryptography, as well as to acknowledge the injustice experienced by Turing and countless other members of the LGBTQ+ community