The reason the Turing Test is interesting is not because Turing was famous or influential. It would have been interesting regardless of who proposed it because

The reason the Turing Test is interesting is not because Turing was famous or influential. It would have been interesting regardless of who proposed it because - right or wrong - it caused us to think about mind and computation as possibly equivalent and forced us to think of criteria that would allow us to establish what we are dealing with. It's more along the lines of philosophy than math or physics, but since those are (other) branches of philosophy to begin with I don't see a problem with that.