Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing (London, 23 June 1912 – Wilmslow, Cheshire, 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. He is known as the father of computer science. He was born in Maida Vale, London.^[1]

Turing was born in Maida Vale, London. His father came from a Scottish merchant family. His mother, Ethel Sara Stoney, was the daughter of an engineer from Ireland. Turing was very good at math when he was young.

He went to school at St. Michael’s in St Leonards-on-Sea. Later, he studied at Cambridge University and Princeton University.

In 1936, Turing wrote about a theoretical machine called the Turing machine. This idea became important in the development of computers. He also created the idea of a computer program.

During World War II, Turing worked at Bletchley Park. He helped break secret German messages made by the Enigma machine. This helped the Allies win the war and may have saved millions of lives.

He worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), using cryptanalysis to break Nazi codes. Later, he helped design the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), one of the first stored-program computers. He presented the design in 1946.^[2]

Turing was also interested in artificial intelligence. He proposed the Turing test to check if a machine can "think".^[3]

Turing was homosexual. In 1952, he admitted to having sex with a man. At that time, being gay was illegal in the UK. He was convicted and had to choose between prison or taking hormones to reduce his sex drive. He chose the medicine.^[4] This caused him health problems like impotence and breast growth.^[5]

In 1954, Turing died from cyanide poisoning. Some say he ate a poisoned apple, but the apple was never tested.^[6] It is believed he died by suicide.

In 2009, a petition asked the UK Government to say sorry for how Turing was treated.^[7][8] Prime Minister Gordon Brown later gave an apology and called Turing's treatment "appalling".^[9]

In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II gave him a royal pardon.^{[10][11][12][13]}

The “Turing Law” was later passed to pardon other men who were punished under old anti-gay laws.

1. ↑ Newman M.H.A. 1955. Alan Mathison Turing. 1912–1954. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 1: 253. [1]
2. ↑ Copeland, B. Jack 2006. Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park's code-breaking computers. Oxford University Press. p108 ISBN 978-0-19-284055-4
3. ↑ Harnad, Stevan 2008. The Annotation game: Turing (1950) on Computing, machinery and intelligence Archived 2011-07-17 at the Wayback Machine. In: Epstein, Robert & Peters, Grace (eds) Parsing the Turing Test: philosophical and methodological issues in the quest for the thinking computer. Springer
4. ↑ Turing, Alan (1952). "Letters of Note: Yours in distress, Alan". Archived from the original on December 16, 2012. Retrieved January 28, 2013.
5. ↑ Andrew Hodges (2012). Alan Turing: The Enigma The Centenary Edition. Princeton University. ISBN 9780691155647.
6. ↑ Hodges, Andrew 1983. Alan Turing: the enigma. London: Burnett Books, p488. ISBN 0-04-510060-8
7. ↑ Thousands call for Turing apology. BBC News. 31 August 2009. Retrieved 31 August 2009.
8. ↑ Petition seeks apology for Enigma code-breaker Turing. CNN. 1 September 2009. Retrieved 1 September 2009.
9. ↑ "PM's apology to codebreaker Alan Turing: we were inhumane". The Guardian. 11 September 2009.
10. ↑ "Parliamentary bill launched for Alan Turing pardon". The Guardian. 25 July 2012. Retrieved 25 July 2012.
11. ↑ Nicholas Watt (19 July 2013). "Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing to be given posthumous pardon". The Guardian.
12. ↑ Oliver Wright (23 December 2013). "Alan Turing gets his royal pardon for 'gross indecency' – 61 years after he poisoned himself". The Independent.
13. ↑ "(Archived copy of) Royal Pardon for Alan Turing" (PDF).

• Jack Copeland 2012. Alan Turing: The codebreaker who saved 'millions of lives'. BBC News / Technology [2]