Turing is regarded as one of the greatest cryptographers to have ever lived. Not only did he crack many German ciphers during the war, but he cracked the Enigma machine -- thought at the time to be an impossible task. Forget Kevin Mitnick, Turing was a far superior cracker -- he also invented the Turing machine, a forerunner to the modern microcomputer. Turing was hounded by authorities who were intolerant of his homosexuality. He died in 1954, apparently after eating an apple laced with cyanide.