June 23 1912 Sunday Alan Mathison Turing Born

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (pronounced /ˈtjʊ(ə)rɪŋ/) (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist.Alan Turing

Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science. He provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. Of his role in the modern computer, Time Magazine in naming Turing one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, states: “The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.”[1]

With the Turing test, meanwhile, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE, although it was never actually built in its full form. In 1948, he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark 1, then emerging as one of the world’s earliest true computers.

During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain’s codebreaking centre, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

Near the end of his life Turing became interested in chemistry. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis[2] and he predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, which were first observed in the 1960s.

Turing was homosexual, living in an era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness and homosexual acts were illegal. Subsequent to his being outed, he was criminally prosecuted, which essentially ended his career. He died not long after from what was officially declared self-induced cyanide poisoning, although his mother (and some others) considered the circumstances of his death to be ambiguous.

On 8 June 1954, Turing’s cleaner found him dead; the previous day, he had died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten beside his bed. The apple itself was never tested for contamination with cyanide, but a post-mortem established that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide.

His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability.[35] Others suggest that Turing was re-enacting a scene from Snow White, his favourite fairy tale.[36]

Because Turing’s homosexuality was perceived as a security risk, the possibility of assassination has also been suggested.[37] Supporters of the assassination theory point out that Turing’s British passport was not revoked after his conviction (although he was denied entry to the United States). He was still free to teach mathematics and to travel to other European countries, which he did on many occasions.

His remains were cremated at Woking crematorium on 12 June 1954.

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June 23 1912 Sunday Alan Mathison Turing Born

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