LGBT People in Academia, Science, and Technology

Sally Gearhart (April 15, 1931 – )

Sally Gearhart, now retired, was a lesbian teacher, science fiction author, feminist, and political activist who became the first openly-LGBT tenured professor at an American university when San Francisco State University granted her tenure. In 1978, she served with Harvey Milk as co-chair of the No on 6 campaign against Prop. 6.

Randy Shilts (August 8, 1951 – February 17, 1994)

Randy Shilts was a freelance journalist for The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, and the author of gay-related nonfiction books, including The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, and Conduct Unbecoming: Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military. He is one of the inaugural honorees of the Castro’s Rainbow Honor Walk.

Alan Turing (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954)

Alan Turing was a British mathematician, logician, and computer scientist who in World War II developed a machine that cracked the Nazi’s Enigma code. Winston Churchill has said that Turing made the single most important individual contribution to defeating Nazi Germany. In 1952, he was prosecuted for homosexuality, a crime in England, and agreed to chemical castration rather than jail time. He died in 1954 of arsenic poisoning in what is generally, but not universally, believed to be suicide. He is an inaugural member of the Castro’s Rainbow Honor Walk.