Biologist and pioneer of human sexuality ALFRED KINSEY was born on this date (d: 1956); Kinsey was an American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology who in 1947 founded the Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, now called the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. Kinsey's research on human sexuality profoundly influenced social and cultural values in the United States and many other countries. His book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 shocked the world.

Kinsey was rumored to participate in unusual sexual practices. James H. Jones's biography, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, describes Kinsey as bisexual and experimenting in masochism. He encouraged group sex involving his graduate students, wife and staff. Kinsey filmed sexual acts in the attic of his home as part of his research. Biographer Jonathan Gathome-Hardy explained that using Kinsey's home for the filming of sexual acts was done to ensure the films' secrecy, which would certainly have caused a scandal had the public become aware of them.

The popularity of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male prompted widespread media interest in 1948. Time magazine declared, "Not since Gone With the Wind had booksellers seen anything like it."

The first pop culture references to Kinsey appeared not long after the book's publication: Rubber-faced comic Martha Raye, singing   'Ooh, Dr. Kinsey!' sold a half-million copies. Cole Porter’s song "Too Darn Hot," from the Tony Award–winning Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate, devoted its bridge to an analysis of the Kinsey report and the "average man's" "favorite sport."

In 1949, Mae West, reminiscing on the days when the word "sex" was rarely uttered, said of Kinsey, "That guy merely makes it easy for me. Now I don't have to draw 'em any blueprints... We are both in the same business...Except I saw it first."

ALAN MATHISON TURING OBE, FRS was born on this date (d: 1954); An English mathematician, logician and cryptographer. Turing is considered to be the father of modern computer science. Turing provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation with "the Turing machine," formulating the now widely accepted "Turing" version of the Churq-Turing thesis, namely that any practical computing model has either the equivalent or a subset of the capabilities of a Turing machine.

With the Turing Test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. 

The "standard interpretation" of the Turing Test, in which player C, the interrogator, is given the task of trying to determine which player – A or B – is a computer and which is a human. The interrogator is limited to using the responses to written questions to make the determination.

He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, although it was never actually built. In 1948 he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true computers.

During WWII Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's code-breaking center, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval crypto-analysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the “bombe,” an electromagnetic machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

The 2014 film, The Imitation Game is Turing's story. The title refers to Turing's proposed test of the same name, which he discussed in his 1950 paper on artificial intelligence entitled "Computing Machinery." In 1952, Turing was convicted of "acts of gross indecency" after admitting to a sexual relationship with a man in Manchester. He was placed on probation and required to undergo estrogen therapy to achieve temporary chemical castration. The treatment caused him great anxiety and physical pain. An avid runner, he was no longer able to enjoy this exercise.

Turing died after eating an apple laced with cyanide in 1954. His death was ruled a suicide, but this was controversial and many think he may have been murdered to silence him.

American novelist DAVID LEAVITT was born on this date. He is the author of Family Dancing, Equal Affections, The Page Turner, Martin Bauman, or A Sure Thing, The Lost Language of Cranes, While England Sleeps (for the publication of which he was sued by Stephen Spender), The Body of Jonah Boyd, and numerous short stories.

His most recent novel is The Indian Clerk. At the University of Florida he is the co-director of the creative writing program. He is also the editor of "Subtropics" magazine, The University of Florida's literary review. Leavitt, who is openly Gay, has frequently explored Gay issues in his work. He lives between Florida and Tuscany (Italy), where he had many of his books translated.

JASON THOMAS MRAZ is an American singer-songwriter born on this date. Mraz first came to prominence on the San Diego coffee house scene in 2000. At one of these coffee houses, Mraz met percussionist Toca Rivera and released Live At Java Joe’s. He released his debut album,Waiting for My Rocket to Come, which contained the hit single "The Remedy (I Won’t Worry)", in 2002, but it was not until the release of his second album, Mr. A-Z, in 2005, that Mraz achieved major commercial success.

The album peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 and sold over 100,000 copies in the US. In 2008, Mraz released his third studio album, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and was a commercial success worldwide, peaking in the top ten of many international charts. Mraz's international breakthrough came with the release of the single “I’m Yours" from that same album. The single peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Mraz his first top ten single.

The song was on the Hot 100 for 76 weeks, beating the previous record of 69 weeks held by LeAnn Rimes' “How Do I Live". The song was a commercial success in the US, receiving a 5x platinum certification from the RIAA for sales of over five million. The song was successful internationally, topping the charts in New Zealand and Norway and peaking in the top ten of multiple international charts. Mraz owns an avocado farm in Bonsall in Northern San Diego County.

He is an active supporter of several charities including VH1’s Save The Music Foundation, Musicares, Free The Children, Life Rolls On, the School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community (SPARC) and the Human Rights Campaign. He has been named the 2010 SIMA Humanitarian of the Year. He also received the Clean Water Award in 2010 from the Surfrider Foundation. The same year, he also teamed up with The Nature Conservancy and created a PSA using his song I’m Yours to raise awareness about the non-profit organization's efforts to protect the earth.

JOHN HERBERT, a drag queen, pioneering gay playwright and "mordant gadfly" of the Canadian theatre scene in the 1960s and 70s, died at his Toronto home on this date. He was 74 and had been ill for a month after undergoing a biopsy for prostate cancer Herbert was best known as the author of Fortune and Men's Eyes, his 1964 play that mercilessly exposed the homosexual reality of prison culture.

The trial of WILLIAM DALE JENNINGS begins and lasts for 10 days. Jennings was born in Amarillo, Texas on October 21, 1917. Not long thereafter his parents moved to Denver, Colorado. After graduating from high school there, he moved to Southern California, where he wrote, produced, and directed stage plays in Los Angeles and Pasadena. He studied dance under Lester Horton and later worked with Martha Graham, two early pioneers of modern interpretive dance.

One night in 1952, as Jennings walked home from Westlake Park (now MacArthur Park), four miles west of downtown Los Angeles, he was followed by a plainclothes vice officer and arrested in his house under charges of indecent behavior.

Jennings, of course, was totally disheartened. If word of this got out, his dream of a career in screen writing would be totally shot. From jail, Jennings called Mattachine cohort, Harry Hay. Hay bailed him out of jail early the next morning, and it was then, over breakfast at the Brown Derby, that they decided to fight the charge in court, under grounds of entrapment.

To this end, they founded the Citizens’ Committee to Outlaw Entrapment. Long Beach attorney George Sibley took on the case. After a dramatic Los Angeles court trial that lasted for ten days, Jennings won a jury acquittal in a rebuke of police harassment, intimidation, and entrapment of homosexuals.

The acquittal energized other persecuted homosexual people into action throughout the nation and brought respect to the Mattachine Society, which had funded Jennings's defense. “The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name” was now on its way out of the closet, and the infamous statutes of “Crimes Against Nature” on the law books in every one of the United States were targeted for eradication. By the year 2000, most States had removed those statutes from their laws, partly due to of the influence of Dale Jennings. The struggle continues. An interesting footnote to this entrapment: designer and co-founder of the original Mattachine Society with Harry Hay, Rudy Gernreich left the bulk of his estate to establish a fund to assist Gay men who were arrested through entrapment.