Is it possible that Alan Turing is almost historically ignored because…?
Turing is actually as well-known as most eminent scientists and mathematicians, of the distant past or of more recent years. Every adult of normal intellect knows of his work on The Colossus, and knows about the Turing Test. His place in maths and the philosophy of maths is secure. Among the young, he is not alone in being ignored. How many schoolchildren have heard of Laplace, Eudoxus or Boole? For that matter, how many even among mathematicians have heard of the Cambridge professor (to my shame I have forgotten his name) who published a paper on the arithmetic of infinitesimals which Newton relied on in his progress towards the calculus? I have no sympathy with or brief for the way homosexuals were treated in Turing’s day, but must say that he wasn’t especially picked on; he got the same treatment that very many less eminent men did. They did things differently (and in that respect worse) in those days. It did not stop them, sometimes, honouring and respecting some known intellectual
