Alan Turing

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.