More on Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing (1912-54) was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist, who studied at Kings, Cambridge and Princeton, where Alonzo Church was his doctoral supervisor.  He influence in the development of computer science cannot be overstated.  For example he provided a formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, playing a significant role in the creation of the modern computer.

Because of his paper 'On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem' (a classic, I read it when I was twenty or so), During the WWII, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. He was put in charge of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. It was here that he worked on and broke the Enigma code. After the war he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the Automatic Computing Engine, which bears an uncanny resemblance to computer design, even today.

Towards the end of his life Turing became interested in chemistry and wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis.

Tragedy befell Turing when, in 1952 his homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution homosexual acts being illegal in the United Kingdom at that time. Turing accepted treatment with female hormones, chemical castration, as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, a few weeks before his 42nd birthday, from an apparently self-induced cyanide poisoning, although his mother (and some others) considered his death to be accidental, as Turing's interest in chemistry meant he had cynanide in his house.

On 10 September 2009, following an Internet campaign, then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.

He was awarded the OBE.

The Alan Turing Memorial in Manchester