In the winter of 1952, Alan Turing called on the Manchester police to investigate a break-in at his house. He suspected an estranged lover was responsible and, being the earnest man that he was, reported his suspicion to the police. The problem was, Turing's lover was Arnold Murray. Homosexuality was illegal in the UK, and Turing was convicted of gross indecency. Rather than go to prison, he chose to submit himself to chemical castration. Two years later, Turing killed himself by eating a cyanide-laced apple.

This tragedy is well-known to some, since Alan Turing is also considered one of the fathers of modern computation. In particular, he was responsible for describing the operation of an abstract model of any computer (called a Turing machine) and of laying the foundations for the field of artificial intelligence via the Turing test.

Provoked by a public petition, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has released a formal apology on behalf of the British government for its treatment of Alan Turing. The gesture is earnest and real, and it reads without prejudice or coercion.

Yet, despite the fact that the PM's letter acknowledges the role of computer scientists in agitating for an apology, and despite the fact that the original petition highlight's Turing's role in laying the foundations for computing, nowhere does the British government's response mention that fact, even in passing. Instead, the apology relies on Turing's earlier history as a cryptanalyst, specifically his development of the "bombe" machine, used to break German Enigma codes during WWII. Here's how the PM's letter reads:

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different.

The letter goes on to acknowledge Turing's contribution "to humankind" for his help in rescuing Europe from "mankind's darkest hour."

I'm sure there was little intentional subtext in Brown's reply. But one can't help but wonder why the memory of destruction, even if a necessary one, so overshadows a memory of creation. What could Brown's omission possibly mean? Is his office simply unaware of Turing's role in the history of computing? Is the fact that Turing's contribution to that field remains too abstract and historically distant to make his engineering accomplishments familiar? Is being a war hero simply more noble than being a pioneer of ideas? Is this an omission of ignorance, or of harry, or of editing?

I suppose we'll never know, just as we won't know what Turing would have done had he lived longer than 42 years on earth.