Alan Turing
Father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
- Formulated the Universal Turing Machine model defining computation limits
- Broke the German Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park (saving millions of lives)
- Proposed the Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence (1950)
- Designed the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)
Biography & Legacy
Alan Mathison Turing (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing Machine.
The Universal Machine
In his seminal 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”, Turing proved that a single theoretical machine could perform any possible computation if supplied with an appropriate set of symbolic instructions. This concept gave birth to the modern stored-program computer.
The Enigma Cryptanalysis
During the Second World War, Turing was a leading participant in war-time codebreaking at Bletchley Park. He designed the electromechanical Bombe machines, which broke the complex Enigma cipher used by the German military, playing a pivotal role in Allied victory.