Alan Mathison Turing
Alan Mathison Turing was a British mathematician
and computer scientist. He was born on June 23rd, 1912 in Maida Vale, London. Him and his brother stayed
with friends and relatives until his father retired from the Indian Civil
Service in 1926. He went to college at Cambridge University and
even taught there afterwards. It was there that he created a concept,
known now as the Turing machine, which said that automatic computation cannot
solve all mathematical problems. This concept is known as the basis for
modern theory of computation.
Turing was interested in the
question of what it means for a task to be computable. For a task to be
computable, it must be able to be carried out and completed on some sort of
machine. This set of instructions is known as the algorithm for the task.
However, the algorithm for a task may only be completed based on the
capabilities of the device. The Turing machine was basically a way to
figure out whether or not an algorithm is computable, as some devices may not
accurately describe whether or not a device is computable.
After returning from Princeton University in America in 1938, he began secretly working part-time for the British cryptanalytic department, the Government Code and Cypher school. Once World War II broke out, he began working there full time deciphering encrypted German messages. He was a great intelligence for the Allies after designing a machine, known as the bombe, that successfully encoded German messages.
After the war, he wanted to
develop a machine that could process information. His plans were
dismissed by his colleagues, who missed out on being the first to design a
digital computer. The blueprints for his machine showed that its
computation speeds were much faster than others. He later went back to
Manchester University where he directed a computing laboratory that
helped form the basis for artificial intelligence.
In 1952, Turing was tried and
convicted for homosexuality, which was a criminal offense at the time, as they
were a security risk because they were open to blackmail. To avoid going
to prison, he accepted treatment with female hormones. On June 7th, 1954,
just 16 days before his 42nd birthday, died from cyanide poisoning. An
inquest determined his death a suicide, but some believe his death was
accidental.
