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Alan Turing. Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS ( / ˈtjʊərɪŋ /; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. [5] Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm ...
- Alan Mathison Turing, 23 June 1912, Maida Vale, London, England
- 7 June 1954 (aged 41), Wilmslow, Cheshire, England
- Overview
- Early life and career
- The Entscheidungsproblem
- The Church-Turing thesis
- Code breaker
Alan Turing (born June 23, 1912, London, England—died June 7, 1954, Wilmslow, Cheshire) British mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, and mathematical biology and also to the new areas later named computer science, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and artificial life.
The son of a civil servant, Turing was educated at a top private school. He entered the University of Cambridge to study mathematics in 1931. After graduating in 1934, he was elected to a fellowship at King’s College (his college since 1931) in recognition of his research in probability theory. In 1936 Turing’s seminal paper “On Computable Numbers,...
What mathematicians called an “effective” method for solving a problem was simply one that could be carried by a human mathematical clerk working by rote. In Turing’s time, those rote-workers were in fact called “computers,” and human computers carried out some aspects of the work later done by electronic computers. The Entscheidungsproblem sought ...
An important step in Turing’s argument about the Entscheidungsproblem was the claim, now called the Church-Turing thesis, that everything humanly computable can also be computed by the universal Turing machine. The claim is important because it marks out the limits of human computation. Church in his work used instead the thesis that all human-computable functions are identical to what he called lambda-definable functions (functions on the positive integers whose values can be calculated by a process of repeated substitution). Turing showed in 1936 that Church’s thesis was equivalent to his own, by proving that every lambda-definable function is computable by the universal Turing machine and vice versa. In a review of Turing’s work, Church acknowledged the superiority of Turing’s formulation of the thesis over his own (which made no reference to computing machinery), saying that the concept of computability by a Turing machine “has the advantage of making the identification with effectiveness…evident immediately.”
Britannica Quiz
Having returned from the United States to his fellowship at King’s College in the summer of 1938, Turing went on to join the Government Code and Cypher School, and, at the outbreak of war with Germany in September 1939, he moved to the organization’s wartime headquarters at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire. A few weeks previously, the Polish governm...
Apr 2, 2014 · Learn about the life and achievements of Alan Turing, the famed British mathematician and code-breaker who pioneered computer science and artificial intelligence. Find out how he was convicted and treated for homosexuality, and how his legacy was honored by the UK government.
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Jun 3, 2002 · Alan Turing. First published Mon Jun 3, 2002; substantive revision Mon Sep 30, 2013. Alan Turing (1912–1954) never described himself as a philosopher, but his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” is one of the most frequently cited in modern philosophical literature. It gave a fresh approach to the traditional mind-body ...
Learn about Alan Turing's life, achievements and legacy in computer science, codebreaking and artificial intelligence. Discover how he invented the universal Turing machine, cracked Enigma codes, and proposed the Turing test.
- Jacob Aron
Alan Turing - Computer Designer, Codebreaker, Enigma: In 1945, the war over, Turing was recruited to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London to create an electronic computer. His design for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was the first complete specification of an electronic stored-program all-purpose digital computer.
Explore the online collection of Turing's letters, papers, photos and more from the Turing archive at King's College. Learn about his life, work and legacy through his own words and images.
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