During the Second World War Turing famously helped to crack the German Enigma code using one of the earliest electronic computers, the 'bombe'. The cracking of the cipher, which the Germans believed impossible, probably shortened the war by years, saving countless lives.

Dozens of wheels rotated in each bombe making a noise like 'a thousand knitting needles'. And a legion of bombes supported decryption on an industrial scale. So effective was it that on one occasion a message was decoded in less than 15 minutes.

When the war ended, Turing worked on the government Advanced Computing Engine (ACE) project. Before such machines were invented, large scale arithmetical calculations were carried out by teams of specially trained women.

Computers were then quickly applied to complex problems in chemistry and life sciences. At Manchester University, Turing researched the relationship between mathematics and cell growth, beginning a new field he named Morphogenesis. At Oxford, in 1957, Dorothy Hodgkin used Pilot ACE and X-ray crystallography (a technique also fundamental to the discovery of the structure of DNA) to help her to crack the structure of vitamin B12 and was awarded a Nobel Prize.

Turing was condemned for homosexuality in an era when it was illegal. Under constant surveillance as a security risk, he apparently took a bite from a cyanide-laced apple. His death was officially declared suicide, though the exact circumstances remain a mystery.

As a leader in computation--particularly in programming--he deserved better. However, in recent decades he has been recognised as one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century.

Check the news and tweets sitting on the Central line. Find the client’s office with GPS. Call my Mother on the way.

In Starbucks before next meeting and quick notes typed in. Read chapter of Hunger Games using the Kindle application (not great literature but engaging). Tackle a couple of chess puzzles. Get them right: brain clear this morning—always a sign. Check my notes on Evernote. Take a photo of an article in the free Metro so I can look at it later.

Life is a succession of choices, and this helps you to make them. Smart these phones.

When I finished my degree I worked in international marketing and travelled the world. I was always proud (and grateful!) that English is the most widely spoken language with about 80 percent of the world being able to speak it. But it is not the real lingua franca any more. The most popular language comprises 0s and 1s--the binary language of computers. GB Shaw said America and England were 'separated by the same language,' but the binary language unites the world.

What's more, the two binary languages of DNA nucleotide pairing and computer coding are set dominate the coming decades in a combination of genomics and computer science. David Baltimore said that Biology is today an information science. Indeed, Bioinformatics combines life and computer science so that they are as interlocked as the strands of DNA.

We will see if genomics lives up to its promise, of course. As another scientist, Neils Bohr, said: 'Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.' Even the exquisite DNA translation process sometimes gets it wrong and proteins end up with the wrong amino acids, impairing their function. Indeed the majority of DNA itself is regarded as 'junk', because it seems to have no function. All of this all sounds a bit like computer code and its creation, another systematic human process.

I have been fascinated by interface between man and machine for more than 30 years. Now it seems more alluring than ever.

The Daily Telegraph reported the social networking antics of doctors who made references to 'birthing sheds' (maternity units) and "cabbage patches" (intensive care, from CABG). The former was regarded as worse by a consultant because it entailed having to work with 'madwives'. On being questioned online about their opinions, the doctors resorted to some unconvincing post hoc rationalisation.