Cass R. Sunstein, Columnist

A Pardon for War Hero Convicted of Being Gay

In every decade, it is tempting to look back on previous practices and to wonder how good people could have acquiesced in, or even approved of, a wide range of cruelties and injustices.

December 26, 2013 at 6:16 PM UTC

By Cass R. Sunstein

Cass R. Sunstein is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the author of “The Cost-Benefit Revolution” and a co-author of “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness.”

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Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician and also a genuine war hero, not because he fought in combat, but because he did crucial work for the British government during World War II. Turing broke a number of German codes, including communications that had been scrambled by the Enigma machines. In 1945, King George VI awarded Turing the Order of the British Empire.

In the following years, Turing made numerous contributions to knowledge, including the domain of pattern recognition. Many people consider him the father of computer science. Since 1966, the Association of Computing Machinery has awarded the Turing Award, perhaps the highest distinction in all of computer science, for contributions "of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field."