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 Alan
M. Turing: the Enigma
It is impossible to overemphasize the impact of this man not just
on science but on all of modern history.
Alan Turing invented computers (both conceiving the theory of computation
and actually building them), advanced criptography, started research
in Artificial Intelligence (giving an operative definition of intelligence
known as Turing Test, and discussing learning machines very similar
to modern neural networks). Furthermore, his work in deciphering
german communications during the war actually changed the course
of the conflict.
And yet, this man ended his days jailed by his own country because
of his homsexuality, and finally died (probably suicided) nearly
a madman.
Alan Turing was a brilliant original thinker. Formally a mathematician,
in his lifetime he studied and wrote papers over a whole spectrum
of subjects, from philosophy and psychology through to physics,
chemistry and biology. He graduated from Cambridge in Mathematics
in 1934, was a fellow at Kings College for two years, during which
he wrote his famous paper which introduced the Turing Machine,
went to Princeton for two years to do a Ph.D., and returned to Kings
for a year. At the outbreak of war in September 1939 he was drafted
to the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park
as a cryptanalyst. Here he made a major contribution to the battle
to decode the German Enigma encodings, designing the "Bombe", though
he was not directly involved with the later Colossus project.
After the war he went to NPL to design a stored-program computer
for them, the ACE. But after delays in starting to build ACE he
went back to Kings for a year, before being invited by Max Newman
to Manchester.
Turing joined the Department of Mathematics at Manchester as a Reader
in September 1948, with the nominal title of "Deputy Director of
the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory". (The Royal Society
Computing Machine Laboratory was the room the Baby occupied; there
was no known "Director"!)
Meanwhile, he was continuing his theoretical work and in 1950 published
another famous paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence",
which anticipated the subject of Artificial Intelligence.
Alan Turing remained at Manchester till his untimely death in June
1954.
Read more about Alan Turing at: turing.org.uk
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Alan
Turing: The Enigma
by Andrew Hodges,
Douglas Hofstadter(Preface)
Amazon.com
Alan Turing died in 1954, but the themes of his life epitomize
the turn of the millennium. A pure mathematician from a tradition
that prided itself on its impracticality, Turing laid the
foundations for modern computer...
Read more
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