Alan Turing - the man with no gun

Alan Turing was a brilliant English code-breaker who helped turn the tide of World War II. He is an honorable individual who has made contributions in the field of Computers and Mathematics. Turing was born on June 23, 1912, in London. He was known to be an educator and a mathematician. According to his biography, he proved in his 1963 paper, “On Computable Numbers, ” that a universal algorithmic method of determining truth in math cannot exist. He proved that mathematics will contain undecidable propositions. In his paper, he introduced the “Turing Machine” which were known to be “widely acknowledged as the foundation of research in artificial intelligence. At a young age, Alan Turing had shown many signs of intelligence which many of his teachers had recognized. He attended a well-known Sherborne school at age 13 and grew interested in math and science. He then enrolled at King’s College (University of Cambridge) in England studying there from 1931 to 1934. While attending King’s College, he delivered a paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to Entscheidungs” which was about the notion of a universal machine. Over the next two years, Turing studied mathematics and cryptology at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and then received his Ph. D from Princeton University in 1938. He returned to Cambridge to take a part time position with the Government Code and Cypher School, a British code-breaking organization. This had led Alan Turing to make many contributions to society. He was known to be a Renaissance man who studied and made contributions to the philosophical study of the nature of intelligence, to biology and to physics. During World War II, he was secretly working in government cryptanalysis. He wrote two papers about mathematical approaches to code-breaking, which became such important assets to the Code and Cypher School (later known as the Government Communications Headquarters). He was responsible for breaking the Enigma code used by the Germans. According to Copeland, it was estimated that his bombe device has shortened the war in Europe by two to four years. This has made a big an amazing impact on the war. Even though Alan Turing had contributed so much to society and to the computer world, he still faced discrimination. In 1952, during an investigation, Alan Turing admitted that he had sexual relationship with Arnold Murray. Homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom during the 1950’s, so when Turing admitted to the police, he was charged with gross indecency. The humiliating trial he had gone through ruined his life and his career. Because he was gay, he was sentenced to hormone “therapy” which Alan Turing was forced to undergo chemical castration. The treatment went on for a year and it rendered Turing which made him feel weak and caused gynecomastia. With this criminal record, he would never again be able to work for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British government’s postwar code-breaking centre. On June 8, 1954, Alan Turing was found dead by his cleaner. The cause of his death was cyanide poisoning. A half-eaten apple was found besides his bed. Although the apple was never tested for cyanide, it is speculated that it was the means through which Alan committed suicide. Turing showed no sign of despondency before his death and several people including Turing’s mother believe that he consumed cyanide by accident and that it was not a case of suicide. (Famous Scientists) In a June 2012 BBC article, philosophy professor and Turing expert Jack Copeland argued that Turing’s death may have been an accident. The apple was never tested for cyanide, nothing in the accounts of Turing’s last days suggested he was suicidal and Turing had cyanide in his house for chemical experiments he conducted in his spare room. In 2009, an online petition called for an official apology from the government for Turing’s prosecution as a homosexual which received thousands of signatures. An apology was received on September 2010 and described the treatment given to Turing as “utterly unfair”. After his death, Turing was honored in numerous ways. In 1999, Time magazine named him as one of the hundred most important people of the 20th century. He was also ranked 21st on the BBC nationwide poll of the “100 Greatest Britons” in 2002. Overall, Alan Turing has been recognized for his intelligence and impact on computer science. Many of the people in this world see him as the “founder” of this field of Computer Science.