{"id":11711,"date":"2019-02-06T10:54:01","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T10:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=11711"},"modified":"2019-02-06T10:54:01","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T10:54:01","slug":"alan-turing-named-greatest-icon-of-20th-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/around-ou\/tv-radio\/alan-turing-named-greatest-icon-of-20th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Turing named greatest icon of 20th century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Father of the computer, World War Two code breaker and scientific genius Alan Turing was named the greatest icon of the 20th century in the live final of\u00a0Icons<\/a><\/em>, co-produced by the BBC and The Open University\u2019s Broadcast and Partnerships team.<\/p>\n

Turing won the public vote having been pitted against fellow finalists Dr Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Ernest Shackleton, David Bowie, Muhammad Ali and Pablo Picasso.<\/p>\n

A profound impact on the 20th century<\/h2>\n

Wildlife presenter Chris Packham delivered a passionate speech about Turing’s life and legacy. He noted that during his lifetime, Turing was persecuted because of his sexuality, and died by suicide which he said was an “unforgiving tattoo on humanity’s conscious.”<\/p>\n

The Open University’s Milton Keynes campus has a building named after Turing<\/a>, who was based at nearby Bletchley Park during the war effort. Open University Senior Lecturer in Computing, Dr Neil Smith,<\/a> one of the academic consultants that supported the series, said that Turing had “a profound impact on the 20th century and the world now…he laid the theoretical framework for all computers.”<\/p>\n