Alan Turing

The Queen has given a rare Royal Pardon to Alan Turing for his alleged personal practices. As the BBC reports:

"Turing deserves to be remembered and recognised for his fantastic contribution to the war effort and his legacy to science. A pardon from the Queen is a fitting tribute to an exceptional man."
The pardon comes into effect on 24 December.

Turing died in June 1954 from cyanide poisoning and an inquest decided that he had committed suicide. However, biographers, friends and other students of his life dispute the finding and suggest his death was an accident. 

 Although Turing was known for his seminal ideas on computers and his work on code breaking, my personal appreciation was his work on tessellation and flower coloring. This essentially was the development of the understanding of inter-cellular communications which only now is being fully understood. I often wonder what would have happened if Turing had lived and had the chance to understand what Watson and Crick had done just up the road a piece from where he was at the time.