Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing (London, 23 June 1912 – Wilmslow, Cheshire, 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. He is known as the father of computer science. He was born in Maida Vale, London.^[1]

A statue of Alan Turing

Turing had the idea of the 'bombe', a mechanical computer. Details were added by others, and it was built by a Post Office engineer. This is a rebuild of the original

Early life

Turing was born in Maida Vale, London. His father came from a Scottish merchant family. His mother, Ethel Sara Stoney, was the daughter of an engineer from Ireland. Turing was very good at math when he was young.

Education

He went to school at St. Michael’s in St Leonards-on-Sea. Later, he studied at Cambridge University and Princeton University.

Career

In 1936, Turing wrote about a theoretical machine called the Turing machine. This idea became important in the development of computers. He also created the idea of a computer program.

During World War II, Turing worked at Bletchley Park. He helped break secret German messages made by the Enigma machine. This helped the Allies win the war and may have saved millions of lives.

He worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), using cryptanalysis to break Nazi codes. Later, he helped design the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), one of the first stored-program computers. He presented the design in 1946.^[2]

Turing was also interested in artificial intelligence. He proposed the Turing test to check if a machine can "think".^[3]

Private life

Turing was homosexual. In 1952, he admitted to having sex with a man. At that time, being gay was illegal in the UK. He was convicted and had to choose between prison or taking hormones to reduce his sex drive. He chose the medicine.^[4] This caused him health problems like impotence and breast growth.^[5]

Death

In 1954, Turing died from cyanide poisoning. Some say he ate a poisoned apple, but the apple was never tested.^[6] It is believed he died by suicide.

Legacy

In 2009, a petition asked the UK Government to say sorry for how Turing was treated.^[7][8] Prime Minister Gordon Brown later gave an apology and called Turing's treatment "appalling".^[9]

In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II gave him a royal pardon.^{[10][11][12][13]}

The “Turing Law” was later passed to pardon other men who were punished under old anti-gay laws.