Major works in computing and cryptography; his trial for homosexuality

Alan Turing was a mathematician, cryptographer, and a pioneer of computer science.


Today, Turing may best be known for his work at Bletchley Park during World War II, and his part in breaking the then famous German Enigma code that proved too good for the allies to decipher.

His trial for homosexuality and subsequent death (alleged to be by suicide) remain debatable controversies.

By this time Turing was also a well known mathematician.

As a young man, his idea of a ‘Universal Machine’, a hypothetical type of computer, resolved one of the most important problems in 20th century mathematics.

On 4 September 1939, the day after the UK declared war on Germany, Turing reported to Bletchley Park, the wartime station of Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS).

[img]https://probaway.files./2013/07/turing_age_4.jpg[/img]
Turing at age 4
During World War II he was the principal man responsible for breaking the German Enigma code.

It is estimated that his bombe device shortened the war in Europe by two to four years.

Alan Turing was born in Maida Vale, London on June 23, 1912. The site of his birth is commemorated by a blue plaque.

His father worked for the Indian Civil Service (ICS).
His parents had to travel between England and India often and they left Alan and his elder brother in the care of a retired Army couple.


Much of Turing’s work was not published in the formal sense of appearance in a scientific journal of the day.

Turing Test:

In 1936 Turing published a paper in which he came up with the idea of the Universal Turing machine which was capable of computing anything that was computable.

Von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to this paper.
In 1950 Turing proposed an experiment to find out if a machine was “intelligent”.

The idea was that a computer could be said to “think” if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human being.
The test is now called the Turing test.

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