Time Named Turing As One Of The 100 Most Important People Of The Century

Since 1966, the computing community has recognized achievements in theory or practice with the Turing Award. It is frequently referred to as the computing industry's Nobel Prize. One of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century, according to Time Magazine in 1999, was Turing. Turing came in at number twenty in the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest Britons in 2002. In Manchester's Sackville Park, a statue of Alan Turing was unveiled on June 23, 2001. The statue shows Turing holding an apple, a metaphor for forbidden love, the thing that gave rise to Newton's theory of gravitation, and the thing that many believe Turing used to commit suicide.

Alan Turing accomplished more in a short period of time than anyone could aspire do in a lifetime. He exhibited a highly-disciplined personality capable of becoming an authority in just about whatever he had an interest in thanks to his capacity to conceptualize the unfathomable and put these lofty thoughts down on paper, then into practice. Even if not all of Turing's discoveries—such as the Bombe that cracked the Enigma code—were crucial in winning the war, each theory or creation opened the door for later generations of scientists to expand upon, modify, and perfect Turing's concepts.