England
(Obviously)
Alan Turing
- was mathematics complete?
- was mathematics consistent?
- was mathematics decidable?
Entscheidungsproblem or decision problem
the answer was believed to be "yes" to all three.
- disproved Hilbert's assumption
- Universal (Turing) Machine
- capable of solving any calculation
- foundation of the logical operations used in all digital electronic computers
Cambridgeshire
- Dec 1930 - elected to scholarship at King's College
Cambridge
Milton Keynes
Bletchley Park
G
F
Testery
D
H
Newmanry
E
11
3
A
Cottage
C
6
B
8
Mansion
4
Alan Turing and
The Bombe
The Enigma Machine
- invented by a Dutchman in 1919
- used by Germans in WWII to encipher and decipher messages
- Turing had come up with a design for a machine to speed up the decoding process within two months working at Bletchley Park.
- Letters would be switched in pairs (e.g., A becomes E and vice versa)
- Every key press would rotate the first rotor one position
- One full rotation of the first rotor would rotate the second rotor one position, and so on
- cribs - common phrases that were likely to be found in a message
- the bombe would go through all possible Enigma settings searching for settings where the crib was possible
- Turing also came up with Banburismus and Turingery
Buckinghamshire
one of the most interesting and unsung intellectual minds in history.
Greater London
- Alan Mathison Turing born in Maida Vale, June 23rd, 1912
East Sussex
Dorset
Hastings
- Alan went on to Sherborne School
"Not very good. He spends a good deal of time apparently in investigations in advanced mathematics to the neglect of elementary work. A sound groundwork is essential in any subject. His work is dirty."
"I feel sure that I shall meet Morcom again somewhere and that there will be some work for us to do together, and as I believed there was for us to do here. Now that I am left to do it alone I must not let him down but put as much energy into it, if not as much interest, as if he were still here. If I succeed I shall be more fit to enjoy his company than I am now."
- John and Alan were left with a retired Army couple, Colonel and Mrs Ward
- Alan attended St. Michael's
- met Christopher Morcom late 1927
- Chris shared Alan's passion for science
- Alan and Chris both tried to win scholarships to Trinity
- Christopher died of bovine tuberculosis on February 13th, 1930
- "he made everyone else seem so ordinary"
- Alan later became an atheist, though he still believed in the afterlife
- Around 1927 Alan wrote a Précis of Einstein's Theory of Relativity
- Alan identified the crucial point
- he extrapolated Einstein's questioning of Newton's Laws of Motion
Dear Mrs Morcom,
I want to say how sorry I am about Chris. During the last year I worked with him continually and I am sure I could not have found anywhere another companion so brilliant and yet so charming and unconceited. I regarded my interest in my work, and in such things as astronomy (to which he introduced me) as something to be shared with him and I think he felt a little the same about me. Although that interest is partly gone, I know I must put as much energy if not as much interest into my work as if he were alive, because that is what he would like me to do. I feel sure that you could not possibly have had a greater loss.
Yours sincerely, Alan Turing
GC&CS
Tributes
Post-War
Pre-War
Background
- 1945 - Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)
- construction delayed
- Turing became disillusioned
Family
Alonzo Church
- Julius Mathison Turing
- worked for the Indian Civil Service
- Ethel Sara Turing (née Stoney)
- John Turing
- born September 1st, 1908
- published his own paper on the Entscheidungsproblem using lambda calculus
- Turing's method was more direct
awarded annually since 1966
Breaking the Code
- Based on Andrew Hodges' book Alan Turing: The Enigma
- 1986 London's West End
- 1987 Broadway
- 1996 BBC television production
- Traveled to Princeton in New Jersey, U.S.A.
- Cipher machine idea
- multiplied two long binary numbers together to produce enciphered text
- "if a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent"
- other theorems rested on the condition that machines must not make mistakes
- "this is not a requirement for intelligence"
- suggested incorporating a random number generator to create a "learning machine"
Alan Turing
Memorial
In Sackville Park, Manchester
Unveilled 2001
- "Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?"
- the "Imitation Game"
- If a judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine has passed the Turing test
Bletchley Park
Statue
Completely
Automated
Public
Turing test to tell
Computers and
Humans
Apart
- 1.5-ton, life-size statue
- unveiled June 19 2007
- Built from approximately half a million pieces of Welsh slate
- sculpted by Stephen Kettle
- commissioned by the late American billionaire Sidney Frank.
Conviction & Death
When asked if the Apple logo was inspired by Alan Turing, Steve Jobs replied
- In 1952 Alan Turing started a relationship with Arnold Murray
- Both men were later charged with gross indecency
- Turing plead guilty and was given a choice between imprisonment and probation along with hormonal treatment
- Conviction led to the removal of his security clearance and preventing him from working further with the GC&CS
- Turing died of cyanide poisoning June 7th 1954
- Believed to have been suicide
- Could have been an accident due to an experiment with cyanide
- Andrew Hodges suggests the experiment was arranged deliberately to give his mother some plausible deniability
The Imitation Game
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch