Alan Turing beats Bowie and Mandela to be named the BBC's 20th Century Icon

Alan Turing has been named the ‘The Greatest Person of the 20th Century’ on the BBC’s Icons show.

The mathematician and pioneering computer scientist won the public vote, beating the likes of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, David Bowie, Picasso and Ernest Shackleton.

Show presenter Chris Packham gave a passionate speech about the man who broke the enigma code, thus saving countless lives during World War II, but also called into question how he was treated when he was alive.

Turing was persecuted and criminalised for his homosexuality, and took his own life in 1954.

“All he got for all of his toil and all of our trouble was a poisoned apple,” said Packham (Turing was thought to have poisoned himself after lacing an apple with cyanide).

(Credit: PA)

“A genius, a saviour, but he was also autistic and gay so we betrayed him and drove him to suicide. Shame. Writ large his death, an unforgiving tattoo on humanity’s conscious.”

Packham then asked the audience at the live broadcast to take out their phones and hold them up in the air.

“In each of your hands you hold a little bit of Alan Turing,” he said.

“He’s with us when we wake up, he’s with us when we go to bed at night and he’s with us when we talk to our loved ones.

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he? Glistening in our darkest hour. You see, Alan Turing’s legacy hasn’t passed he’s not a relic of the 20th century, his gift to us is our future.”

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