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A ‘Gargoyle’ of Alan Turing, the visionary British mathematician who
played the leading role in cracking the German Enigma code during the Second
World War, has been erected by Oregon University in the US. Computer scientists
have placed the three-feet-high copper bust on the side of their new building
to honour Turing’s work in laying the theoretical foundations of the modern
computer in the 1940s and 1950s.

The department has also put up an image of John von Neumann, Turing’s
US contemporary, by the same artist. Wayne Chabre told The Mathematical
Intelligencer magazine that: ‘Turing was not social, not wealthy, not as
influential as von Neumann in his lifetime. But he seemed to have much more
of a vision to communicate.’

Turing’s formulation of computability is the cornerstone of modern computer
theory. His wartime intelligence work, described by Churchill as ‘my secret
weapon’, has never been officially recognised by the British government.
In 1952 he was forced to submit to drug therapy after telling police he
was homosexual.