Given that Alan Turing is finally getting the recognition he deserves (albeit tragically too late), it seems only right to look at how this came about. It is the result of a process that began more than thirty years ago; a process that was initiated (and largely driven) by one man – Oxford academic and gay activist Andrew Hodges.

In 1977, in the course of his work as a mathematician at Oxford University, Hodges learned that:

“…there was a dramatic human and historical story lying behind these scientific and technical achievements and his early death in 1954.”

In consequence, he set out to discover the details of Turing’s life and the circumstances behind his death. Six years later, in 1983, he published Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence. It was a major first step in bringing Turing’s story to light.

The book hasn’t been out of print since 1983 and has been translated into a number of languages. That in itself is an indication of the way the world has begun to hear about Alan Turing. It has also served as a valuable source of information for other activities that have served to increase Turing’s profile: in 1986, for example, dramatist Hugh Whitemore used the book to inform his play Breaking the Code. The play ran in London and New York and was subsequently filmed for television in 1996. In 2011 the UK’s Channel Four broadcast the drama-documentary Britain’s Greatest Codebreaker. Earlier this year the Pet Shop Boys used text from the book in their work The Man from the Future. And, most recently, we have seen the release of the acclaimed film The Imitation Game.

And as awareness has grown, so too has the political response. In 2009, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly apologised for Turing’s treatment. In 2013 the Queen formally granted him a posthumous pardon. Sadly, a campaign to have his image on British £10 notes failed in early 2013.

Without Andrew Hodges’ excellent book – which was the seminal text on Turing’s achievements as well as his appalling persecution – it’s most unlikely that any of this would have occurred.