The life and achievements of Alan Turing - the mathematician, codebreaker, computer pioneer, artificial intelligence theoretician, and gay/cultural icon - are being celebrated to mark what would have been his 100th birthday on 23 June.In his short life he had an incredible impact on World War II and the dawn of the computer age. But his story is also filled with tragedy.
To mark the occasion the BBC has commissioned a series of essays that ran during the week.
Read on for some highlights and links to the essays.
Part 1: Turing's genius
His is a story of astounding highs and devastating lows. A story of a genius whose mathematical insights helped save thousands of lives, yet who was unable to save himself from social condemnation, with tragic results. Ultimately though, it's a story of a legacy that laid the foundations for the modern computer age.
He is remembered most vividly for his work on cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park during World War II, developing in 1940 the so-called electro-mechanical Bombe used to determine the correct rotor and plugboard settings of the German Enigma encryptor to decrypt intercepted messages.
Read the entire first article by Vint Cerf here.
On the first day of war, at the beginning of September 1939, Turing took up residence at Bletchley Park, the ugly Victorian Buckinghamshire mansion that served as the wartime HQ of Britain's top codebreakers.
There he was a key player in the battle to decrypt the coded messages generated by Enigma, the German military's typewriter-like cipher machine.
Part 2: The codebreaker
There he was a key player in the battle to decrypt the coded messages generated by Enigma, the German military's typewriter-like cipher machine.
Read the entire second article by Professor Jack Copeland here.
When Alan Turing arrived to start work at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at Teddington, south-west London, he was 33 years old.
It was October 1945 and he was placed in a section by himself, with instructions to design a new type of calculating machine.
Part 3: Father of computing?
It was October 1945 and he was placed in a section by himself, with instructions to design a new type of calculating machine.
Read the entire third article by Professor Simon Lavington here.
Alan Turing was clearly a man ahead of his time. In 1950, at the dawn of computing, he was already grappling with the question: "Can machines think?"
This was at a time when the first general purpose computers had only just been built.
Part 4: Artificial Intelligence
This was at a time when the first general purpose computers had only just been built.
Read the entire fourth article by Professor Noel Sharkey here.
Since the 1970s, everything has changed.
That homosexuality was criminal until 1967 has come to seem hardly credible, and the unmentionable has become commonplace.
Turing was arrested on 7 February 1952 for his affair with a young Manchester man.
He was obliged to undertake injections of female hormones intended to render him asexual.
Alan Turing drank the cyanide but left an apple by his bed.
Part 5: Defiant until death
Since the 1970s, everything has changed.
That homosexuality was criminal until 1967 has come to seem hardly credible, and the unmentionable has become commonplace.
Turing was arrested on 7 February 1952 for his affair with a young Manchester man.
He was obliged to undertake injections of female hormones intended to render him asexual.
Alan Turing drank the cyanide but left an apple by his bed.
Read the entire fifth article by Professor Andrew Hodges here.
Part 6: The legacy
The modern world of iPads, Facebook , mobile phones are all based on his ideas. His work is still the basis for much of the more fundamental research in artificial intelligence.
Sixty years on from Turing famously opening his paper on Computing Machinery and Intelligence, asking if machines can think, the idea of intelligent computers seems a little less ridiculous.
Read the entire sixth article by Mike Lynch here.
Part 7: Colleagues memories
Watch and read these interviews with two of Turing's colleagues, Mike Woodger and Captain Jerry Roberts, here.
Part 8: Centenary celebration
