The life of English mathematician Alan Turing was summarised effectively by the text on the headstone of his grave. “Father of Computer Science, Mathematician, Wartime Codebreaker, Victim of Prejudice”, it says, followed by a quote from the British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell: “Mathematics possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.”
Alan Turing had already discovered the beauty of maths before he went to school. He was exceptionally good with numbers and logic as a child, and by the age of 9 his headmistress had identified him as “a genius”. When he later left his boarding school for the University of
