LONDON, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has apologized to World War II code-breaker Alan Turing for the way he was treated half a century ago.

Brown said Turing, who committed suicide in 1954 after being found guilty of gross indecency with another man, had been treated "inhumanely."

Brown also paid tribute to Turing's most famous work, the breaking of the German Enigma codes, which historians have credited with shortening the war in Europe by as much as two years, The Times of London said.

The tribute names Turing as "the greatest computer scientist ever born in Britain."

"The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely," the prime minister said. "In 1952, he was convicted of 'gross indecency' -- in effect, tried for being gay.

"His sentence -- and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison -- was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later."