The Life of Alan Turing

Alan Turing was born on June 23rd, 1912 in the Maida Vale region of the Greater London area. He was a mathematician, theoretical biologist, logician, cryptanalyst, and a computer scientist. Although he is not the original designer or creator of the computer, he is widely regarded as the creator of computer science and artificial intelligence. He showed signs of genius as a student in school, although his inclination towards math and science wasn't seen as a good thing by his teachers. One of his teachers even wrote "I hope he will not fall between two stools. If he is to stay at public school, he must aim at becoming educated. If he is to be solely a Scientific Specialist, he is wasting his time at a public school" (Hodges 26). He would later go on to study at King's College, Cambridge and then get his PhD from Princeton. He also developed a theoretical machine called a Turing Machine. Basically, a Turing Machine is a very simple computer that consists of a long strip of paper, and the machine can write/read the strip and move the strip around. It can then be used to solve mathematical functions or decide a formal language. These machines were abstract and not actually built, but the idea of the Turing Machine is important foundation for all of the computers we use today.

Alan Turing aged 16

During WWII, the Germans had invented a way to encrypt their messages to each other, so that if the allies intercepted those messages it would be impossible to understand it. These messages were created with what was called the Enigma machine, which would scramble letters typed into it in a certain way to make messages appear as gibberish. The message could later be decrypted with another enigma machine and reappear as the original text. These were first used during WWI, but after a way to decrypt them was discovered they were made more advanced in 1938. This gave the Germans a big advantage over the Allied Forces, and unless a way to decrypt these machines were to be discovered, the Allies would be forced to fight an uphill battle all throughout the war. To solve this issue, Alan Turing created a machine called The Bombe. It was a physical machine built upon the idea of the Turing Machine that would decrypt enigma messages that were put into it. While he initially struggled to get funding to produce a large amount of these machines, after personally writing a letter to Winston Churchill about it over 200 were produced during the war. The fact that the allies were able to decrypt enigma messages was kept a secret, and as a result it turned the tide of the war and helped lead the allies to victory.

In January 1952, Alan Turing’s house was burgled. His male partner at the time said the suspect was an acquaintance of his, and it was reported to the police. While reporting it, Turing admitted that he was in a homosexual relationship, which was illegal in the UK at the time. He was given the option of either going to prison, or undergoing hormonal treatment. He chose the hormonal treatment, and as a result became impotent and developed gynecomastia. He was also now a convicted felon, which barred from continuing work with the GCHQ and denied him entry to the United States. In 1954, he committed suicide by lacing an apple with cyanide and eating it.

In August 2009, the then Prime Minister of the UK Gordon Brown issued an apology for the treatment of Turing, and on December 24th, 2013 Queen Elizabeth II issued a pardon for his conviction. In 1966, the Turing Award was created, which is a prize for theoretical and real contributions to the field of computer science, and is the highest honor in the computing community, considered to be just as valuable as a Nobel Prize. In 1999, Time Magazine named Alan Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century. Although it has not been confirmed, it is rumored that the original Apple logo was also a tribute to Alan Turing. Today he is revered throughout the world as the father of modern computer science, and if it weren't for his work, computers as we know them today would not exist.

Apple Logo 1976-1998

-Erik B.

Sources:

Alan Turing Aged 16. Digital image. N.p., 25 Jul. 2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2015. 

Apple Logo. Digital image. Pixabay. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.  

Hodges, Andrew. Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence. London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1985. Print.