Alan Turing (1912-1954)
Alan Turing was one of the greatest theoreticians of digital computer science during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Throughout his life, he used mathematics as a means to explore whether nature, including human thought, worked like a machine. He is generally thought to be the founder of the field of artificial intelligence.
Turing was born in London, England on June 23rd 1912, to Julius Mathison Turing and Ethel Turing. His father was a colonial civil servant and his mother descended from a family of academic men and women. As a child, Alan Turing studied in Sherborne School where he constantly underwent criticism from his teachers. Turing's best subjects in school were Mathematics and Science; to the discouragement of his teachers, he expressed very little interest in other matters and was given low marks in both English and Latin.
While at school, Alan showed his teacher some advanced Mathematics work he had performed and was then declared to be brilliant. He graduated from school and joined Max Newman's advanced mathematics course. This course was instrumental in refining his unpolished skills. In this class Turing successfully substituted Kurt Godel's languages by Turing machines. This was actual proof that Alan Turing could think many steps in front of his contemporaries as a Turing machine didn't even exist at the time and would have been practically unworkable even if it did.
Through a lecture in 1935, Turing was introduced to Hilbert's question of Decidability, the Entscheidungs problem: Could there exist, at least in principle, any certain method or process by which all mathematical questions could be decided? Turing's answer involves defining the "definite method" as a mechanical process in which a machine "reads" paper tape with symbols printed on it. He reveals that the machine could be given, through the tape, a group of logical instructions to execute any task. He indicates that these tasks can be the same as what any human brain could do (presuming a limited number of frames of mind.)
This Turing Machine is at the cornerstone of the modern theory of computation and computability. His paper, "On Computable Numbers With an Application to the Entscheidungs Problem" is published in August 1936. In it, he builds up Hilbert's question to introduce the concept of the Universal Turing Machine, which translates the various algorithms of countless Turing machines. This single Universal Machine reading the tasks of particular programs, Turing machines, is in essence what is interpreted today by the idea of a computer.
In 1936, Turing is awarded a Smith's Prize for his work on probability theory. He attends Princeton in this same year, working with Alonzo Church, who had arrived at similar conclusions concerning the Entscheidungs problem, and finishes his doctorate. His thesis for his PhD. was the presentation of the concept where hyper computation was achievable using Turing machines. These were highly complex problems that could not be solved using any identified algorithm.
Shortly after Turing's return to England Britain was pulled into World War II. He joined the Government Code and Cypher School in Bletchley Park, where a massive campaign was underway to crack German codes which had been encyphered by machine. Turing played a crucial role (still partially classified) in the design of equipment and development of processes to break these cyphers. During World War II, Turing once again spent some time in the United States, possibly consulting with the mathematician John Von Neumann of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, who was working on computer projects.
He amazed the academic world once again in 1940 when he produced a chess program. The only catch was that there was no computer powerful enough to operate the computer program.
In 1945 he moved to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, England, to take on duties for designing a computing device to be utilized in government work. Turing composed designs for the ACE computer, an ambitious stored program computer using vacuum tubes for switching and mercury delay lines for storage. A scaled down version completed in 1950, known as Pilot ACE, was among the earliest functioning stored program computers. Pilot ACE served several meaningful roles, including aircraft design, for many years.
Meanwhile, discontent with advancement on his project at NPL, Turing took a position at Manchester University where a large computer, the Mark I, was being constructed. His position as primary programmer of the Mark I granted him the opportunity to program the computer to practice mathematics, play chess and other games, investigate automatic language translation, and perform cryptanalytics. This was likely the first major effort to use a stored program computer for non-computational actions.Turing's work on computers shaped the design of early computers made by the English Electric and Bendix companies.
In 1950, Turing formulated a test for an intelligent machine: If a knowledgeable individual cannot tell whether a problem is being solved by a computer or a human, the computer that solved the problem is "intelligent." Today some people are still seeking to design computers and programs that can pass Turing's test.
Turing also looked into the mathematical views of biological interactions.He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1951. Later Turing turned his attention to morphogenesis. In 1952 he published ""The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis." He sought to examine the presence of Fibonacci numeric series in plants. This subject area of his opened the way for theories that are used today to analyze pattern development. It wasn't all work and no play for Turing; he was obsessed with the marathon. Students of his influences have drawn comparison between the loneliness that is associated with being a runner and a scientist.
Turing died in his home in Manchester, England, of cyanide poisoning on June 7, 1954. It is rumored that the Apple companies logo of the half bitten rainbow colored apple is Steve Job's way of paying Alan Turing a tribute.
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