Saturday, 23 June 2012

Mathematician of the week Alan Turing


Alan Turing: 1912 – 1952

Alan Turing was a highly talented mathematician who was born in London in 1912 and by all accounts he was average when he was at school (all the best people are). He was criticized for his poor handwriting and for following his own ideas and methods rather than that of his teachers. How often do we hear that old chestnut from teachers? However whilst he was at his school he managed to win all the prizes in mathematics. (1926).

Now what the teachers did not know that Turing was partaking in a little outside reading and this is where he gained his knowledge at an early age. I think this is evidence of the power of just taking a chair and having a read every now and again.

Let us move forward to 1931 and the young Turing went to Cambridge to study mathematics. He graduated in 1934 and was elected as a fellow of King’s College for work, which helped to prove results in probability theory (central limit theory). So far Turing had just been working in the area of probability. It was 1936 that Turing moved into what would be he foundations of what we now call computer science and he published On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. It was this paper that Turing introduced us to the “Turing Machine”, (he obviously didn’t call it this) essentially the machine could write or delete a symbol on a tape. In doing so it would be following an algorithm and so change state (start with one result and end up with a different result).

It is now 1939 and with the outbreak of the war Turing moved to Bletchley Park where he was involved in code breaking of the Germans. In doing so he received the O.B.E for his contributions.

1948 and Turing is now in Manchester where he had been invited by Newman. It was here that Turing produced work into computing and decidability. He was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1951 for his early work with Turing Machines.

We can’t have a Biography of the gentleman without a mention of his arrest in 1952 for a homosexual affair he was having. He actually handed himself into the police as has was threatened with blackmail. He offered no defense as he said he was doing nothing wrong (how times have changed for the good).

He was also at this point working for GCHQ. Who due to the circumstances of his arrest stopped his security clearance. We are now in the cold war and the strange circumstances of his death. Turing was conducting an electrolysis experiment and eating an apple (you can see where this is going). He ate half of his apple and died. Upon inspection potassium cyanide was fond on the apple. It was said he knew it was there.

Well that was Turing the father of modern computer science. Apparently he was also a bit of a runner! Good man.

All the usual apologies for mistakes and things like that.

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