But why base a field on only one person>
Because Alan Turing is the father of computer science. Basically everything that came after depended crucially on his work.
Because Alan Turing is the father of computer science. Basically everything that came after depended crucially on his work.
- To name a few great contributors. Yes Alan Turing is considered the father of computer science but with out the knowledge of others before him (and even during his time) we could be living in a different world right now.
Even the late, great Isaac Newton said - [1]"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_g...
In this light, it seems the original comment is correct.
What do you think would have happened if Turing had never been born?
Perhaps we would never have had a single individual who contributed as much, all at once, as Turing did... but the sum total of his contributions WOULD have been made by other people, eventually.
And yet, he was born, and he did contribute, and we remember him for that, and we remember what his peers did to him in response. And we learn a lesson from that.
Why is this controversial?
The only thing which might be controversial (but really shouldn't be) is the observation that people make foolish and illogical claims when they let their passions drive them to hyperbole. For example, claiming that computer science NEEDED Turing. That without Turing, we would not have computer science.
Its simple. Worship him all you want for what he actually did, but please don't fall prey to the belief that "without so-and-so, X would NEVER have been developed". Or "without so-and-so, we would still be doing Y".
Nonsense. Some other person or group of people would have made those contributions.
This has nothing to do with how horribly he was treated. And if you want to highlight the sickness of the world by pointing out the genius of one of the victims of our diseased culture, that's cool, but we can do that without going off into a fantasy land where some individual was uniquely, in all the world, uniquely capable of making the contributions they made.