Thirty thousand people had signed a petition seeking an apology for Mr Turing, who was credited by Winston Churchill with making the biggest single contribution to the Allied victory in World War II.

Mr Turing worked at top secret Bletchley Park during the war and helped create the device that deciphered messages encoded by Nazi Enigma machines. Cracking the codes helped save Britain from German conquest.

After the war, he did ground-breaking work on early computer technology and is often referred to as the father of modern computer science.

But in 1952 he was prosecuted for gross indecency after admitting a sexual relationship with a man.

He was chemically castrated as an experimental 'treatment' and stripped of his security clearance, meaning he could not continue work for the Government Communications Headquarters. Two years later he killed himself, aged 41, by eating an apple laced with cyanide.

P.S. The article says Turing died 53 years agao, but that is an error. He died June 7th, 1954.