In a 2019 BBC audience vote, Alan Turing was named the greatest scientist of the 20th century.
The vote formed part of the BBC Two series Icons: The Greatest Person of the 20th Century. The programme divided influential figures into categories including science, entertainment, arts and politics, then invited the public to choose category winners. Turing won the science category and advanced to the later stages of the competition.
The result reflected his unusually broad legacy. During the Second World War, he made major contributions to codebreaking at Bletchley Park. Before and after the war, he helped establish the mathematical foundations of computer science, including the idea of a general-purpose computing machine. He also made important theoretical contributions to artificial intelligence and mathematical biology.
The wording can be misleading: the BBC vote was a modern public poll about the most significant figure of the 20th century, not a formal scientific award or a consensus ranking by historians. The century is the 20th, covering 1901 through 2000; Turing himself lived from 1912 to 1954.