While most interview questions are focused on current knowledge of a candidate or check his/her skill to solve algorithmic problems I would like to hire a developer who is passionate about programming.

What if instead of asking questions like 


  What do you know about technology "X"?


I will check check the knowledge that is not directly related to solving software engineering problems but shows how curious you are to IT.

For example if I look for a Java developer I can ask who are the most influential people in Java world or show a basic Scala snippet and ask a candidate to interpret the code.

I even considered to show photo of Alan Turing and let the interviewee guess who is on the photo. Does this practice make any sense?

All you have to do is ask him to tell you about one of the projects he's worked on that he most enjoyed.  You'll find out more about his enthusiasm in the following 60 seconds than you ever could showing him photographs of deceased notables.