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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from How Stuff Works.com.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Dablina Chakra Bordy.

And today we're going to be talking about Alan Turing. And he's considered the father of computer science, the father of artificial intelligence, and also one of the most important wartime codebreakers in World War II. So quite a resume just right off the bat there. And for listeners with a more

literary bent, he's also been called the Shelley of Science, which is a name I kind of took a

shine to you. Yeah, and others have too. He's been a really popular podcast suggestion.

Though his resume's focus on math and technology has always kind of scared us off a little bit, I think. I mean, things like number theory, probability, computer programs. Not our usual subject matter.

Stuff I'm honestly a little scared to get into too deeply. But fortunately, some of his work really transcends the arcane. It's understandable if you put some effort into it.

And there's a wealth of biographical materials too, which I feel like the last few podcasts

I've done, that has not been the case.

It was a little refreshing, really, to research Alan Turing and know that there's so much

out there about this man.

There are MIT lectures, there's a digital archive at allenturing.net. There are articles in just about every science journal you can name. And there's a How Stuff Works podcast, too. Yeah. Jonathan and Chris talked about Turin's life last fall on tech stuff. And so that's a great place to turn if you want a little more of a

in-depth discussion on programming specifically. I was glad, though, that even they admitted

that the math was kind of tricky to discuss. It's just so high level. But they do really do a good

job covering the programming and that side of

Turing's story. But it's also June, which is Pride Month, and that's why we've picked Turing

for today's topic. He's a great if tragic example of a remarkable man, really a genius

whose life was so clearly defined by his homosexuality.

And it reminded me a lot of Oscar Wilde, who Katie and I covered last year for Pride Month.

He was another man who was really destroyed by prejudice at the absolute height of his achievement.

So it's a great story to learn about, and it's good to know about Turing's achievements,

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