When you think of the most famous programmers in the world, who do you think of? Alan Turing comes to mind for me. I doubt you would be reading these programming memes today if it wasn’t for Alan Turing. You probably wouldn’t be a programmer, and who knows what kind of world we’d be living in. Turing cracked the Enigma code, beating the nazis and inventing one of the core concepts of computer science in the process. Not only is he the father of theoretical computer science, but he’s also the father of artificial intelligence! We would not have all of those sick pictures of people with six fingers if it were not for this legend. 

Unfortunately, the British government did not treat Turing well after the war ended. He was prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952 and chemically castrated. He died of cyanide poisoning in 1954. Though he was not treated fairly in life, his contributions to computer science live on, and he is now appreciated for the genius he was.