Alan Turing
1912 – 1954 English mathematician, computer scientist
The father of computer science and artificial intelligence.
- Religion
- Raised Anglican, he lost his faith in youth and remained a non-believer.
- Affiliations
- Codebreaker at Bletchley Park in the Second World War. No secret society.
Turing defined the idea of a universal computing machine, the theoretical basis of every computer. He led the breaking of Germany's Enigma code, helping win the war, and posed the famous test for machine intelligence. Persecuted for being gay, he died young in an apparent suicide.
Connections
- associate of Claude Shannon — Met Turing at Bell Labs during the war and traded ideas on computing and cryptography.
- associate of John von Neumann — Built on Turing's theory of universal computation in framing the stored-program computer.
In the timeline
- 1894 Alan Turing is born in London central figure
- 1912 Birth of Alan Turing central figure
- 1936 Turing conceives the Universal Machine mentioned
- 1936 Turing defines computation and its limits mentioned
- 1946 Alan Turing receives the Order of the British Empire central figure
- 1952 Alan Turing convicted of gross indecency central figure
- 1954 Alan Turing dies by suicide central figure