Alan Turing-Who is Alan Turing?

Society of AI
5 min readSep 29, 2020

Alan Turing is famously known as the Father of Modern Computers and was an English Mathematician. He was born in 1911 on the 23rd of June in London, UK. He had a different intelligence and interest in scholarly works right from a very young age of thirteen.

After the completion of his private education, Alan Turing enrolled himself at Cambridge University. He did his Graduation on “Computable Numbers with An Application to the Entscheidings problem “, in these he stated that there is no universal solution to all the mathematical problems this first laid the foundation of algorithms. His papers on a specific topic were presented for the first time in 1937. He was the first scholar to talk about algorithms and computing machines.

Alan Turing, Father of Modern Computers and English Mathematician
Alan Turing

Yes, indeed he was the first person back in 1940–1950 to discuss AI.His vision was to create a model of machinery that can think like humans. He raised a debatable question in his paper in his research papers — Can Machines Think?

Turing was actively doing research between 1931–1938 which laid a foundation for computer science. Amid 1931–34 he introduced a new concept on Central Limit Theorem.

Soon After his Graduation, he presented another set of research papers on whether computing machine has the ability to read and write. These papers and along with the papers on computable numbers with an application that he later named Turing Machine, let to the advancement of computer science soon after world war two came. Alan Turing has written down these papers on the topic of the machine being able to simulate human-like behaviour and an ability to think using intelligence faculty and to use it playing a game of Chess.

His work on “ Computing Machinery and Intelligence” opened the basis for new avenues in A.I. His papers which he first named Universal Machine later came to be known as Turing Machine in 1936. Foundation of Imitation Game is laid on the model of the Turing Machine. He was awarded a Ph.D. in his work in 1938. He then went to Princeton University to Study Cryptology and soon after he was called to work with the Government Code Cipher School and Cryptoanalysis. He was invited to help in breaking of codes which are used by Germany in the German Army Code Machine Engine in World War Two. He came with the development of Bombes to decipher the coding machinery Enigma and another such kind of machine. He has played an immense role during world war two in saving the lives of people. In 1950 he was appointed as the Director of The Computing Laboratory.

He committed suicide at the age of 41, being convicted for homosexual behaviours. He was asked for probation and to choose between imprisonment or his hormonal balance treatment, he chooses the latter. He was fired from his job and his work was nullified. This led him to the harsh act of taking his life. There are many assumptions regarding his death some say he has eaten cyanide ingested apple; the others say no such founding was made in his autopsy. His death may be a result of the grief of the shame he had of his actions is still a mystery until when in BBC News in 2012, Philosophy Professor Jack Copeland argued that: on “Turing death may be an accident he stated Turing was not suicidal and neither any trace of his apple experiment in his spare room nor in the autopsy. He received justice after 60 years of his death in 2009 when John Graham-Cumming raised a petition to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The statement was released on 10th September 2009, on behalf of the English Government, when it apologized posthumously for holding him accused of his sexual orientation. A royal pardon was granted to him by Queen Elizabeth Two, in 2013. “Turing Law “ is passed under his name in 2016, by accepting homosexuality.

He completed his 100 years of his birth anniversary in 2012. He is still remembered for the endless contribution he made to humankind saving it from the deadly holocaust and the horrors of fascism rule. By deciphering the coding machines. In 2007, his life like the statue is built in Bletchley Park Buckinghamshire where he uses to do most of his research work. In 2004, the University of Surrey, on October 28th constructed a bronze statue on his 50th death anniversary.

His ideas are still present with us in our day to day working when we open any word document and a spreadsheet and we are typing on a keyboard, we are working on a Turing Machine. The column I’m not a robot which we submit on any internet proceeding is an example of a Turing Test; it is a standard test for all the technology industry. He wanted to present a machine in which he wanted to be-fool the judge and appear like a human, his work succeeded and he was able to achieve a long term foreseen goal he had in mind in 2013 when turning machine which was the foundation of the imitation games was able to do so and machine intelligence was recognized as a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy.

Alan Turing, design and works still lay down the basis for new findings his blueprint for automatic computing language, a storage program Is used by ACE computers until now.

Alan was barred from cryptographic work at GCCS and GCHQ in 1946, his papers were finally released to the National Archives of the UK recently in 2012.

Turning is till now regarded as an asset for our society, in 2019 Bank of England announced that the UK note of £ 50 will be printed with the picture of him and his work enlisted among 1000 candidates nominated for this announcement his name was among Stephen Hawking and ADA Lovelace enlisted for the choice to be made for the printing of note. He got recognition in 100 important people of the 20th century. Apart from this Princeton University Alumni Weekly also marked him among second-most significant after James Madison.

Alan Turing remains among us with his works and research he did. He is to date recognized for his contributions in Mathematics and Computing Designs, right from being a code breaker and driving his actions towards saving mankind from horrors of World War Two and today in giving justice to a sign of humanity through the framing of Turning Law. His mark on the currency of the UK will make us remember our father of modern computers in our everyday life.

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