Flamboyant wizard programmer

Christopher Strachey was one of the first true Wizard programmers. He started his career as a school teacher, but went on to be one of the most influential computer scientists of his age. The first program he wrote played draughts at a time when those around could only see 'serious applications'. It was the first video game, and first actual artificial intelligence program. His most obvious contributions were in the design of modern programming languages. All the modern languages include features that draw on his work. He helped perfect a way of defining what languages should do mathematically, so helping avoid bugs due to different people having differing understanding of what the commands were meant to do. He also, almost as an aside wrote the first attempt at a program that was creative, and was responsible for the first ever computer music too. He was one of a group of incredibly influential gay computer scientists.