Favorite fairy tale Alan Turing there was a fairy tale about Snow White. He was literally fascinated by the moment when the beauty falls dead after tasting a poisoned apple.
And when on June 8, 1954, he was found lifeless in his own apartment, a bitten apple lay on the bedside table - exactly the same as in the fairy tale about Snow White...“School is a waste of time for him.”
Little Alan's outstanding abilities began to manifest themselves as early as early childhood. And when, at the age of six, the boy went to St. Michael's School in Hastings, its headmaster, having barely met him, predicted a great future for him.
At the age of 13, Alan was sent to the famous private school Sherborne in the city of the same name in Dorset. And very quickly it turned out that this educational institution not a good fit for Alan. The Sherborne school was focused on training humanists, and it had no need for a young mathematician.
“If he intends to stay in a private school, then he should strive to get an education. If he is going to be exclusively a “scientific specialist”, then private school for him it’s a waste of time,” the director of the educational institution wrote to Alan’s parents.
The Cold War between Turing and the school lasted until the end of his studies. At the age of 15 he solved the most difficult math problems, despite the fact that he was not even taught the basics of mathematical analysis.
But Alan's weakness is humanities led to him missing points in his final exams. Because of this, he did not enter Trinity College, where he was going, but King's College, Cambridge.
During these years, student Turing was already hard at work searching for solutions to the most complex mathematical problems of our time.
Order for Enigma
At the age of 24, to formalize the concept of an algorithm, the young scientist proposed a model of an abstract computing machine, which became known as the “Turing machine.”
In addition to mathematics itself, Turing devoted a lot of time to studying cryptography. This is what attracted his attention British intelligence services, who assembled a team of scientists to master the most complex German military codes.
Turing was given the task of unraveling the secret of the German Enigma encryption machine, which was used to encode information transmitted ground forces, navy and air force of Nazi Germany.
Turing developed theoretical basis an electronic-mechanical machine for deciphering the Enigma code, which was called Bombe.
Bomb decryption machine. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Maximilian Schönherr
During the Second World War, Turing achieved enormous success in the field of military cryptanalysis - thanks to him, the Enigma code was completely deciphered, including its more complex version for the Navy. In 1942, the scientist began deciphering the Lorenz code, which was used by the Germans to transmit messages to the high command.
Thanks to the work of Turing and his colleagues, one of the first computers in the world was created, called “Colossus”. This machine cracked the Lorenz code, which allowed the Allies to keep abreast of the correspondence of the highest leaders of Hitler's Germany and shortened the duration of the war by at least several months.In 1945, in an atmosphere of secrecy, 33-year-old Alan Turing was awarded the Order British Empire King George VI for military service.
"Turing Test" and a mug on a chain
Among his colleagues he was known as a “strange guy.” Instead of repairing a bicycle with a flying chain, Turing calculated the intervals through which it flew off so that at the right moment he could simply correct it with his hand. Alan tied his own mug with a chain so that it would not be stolen.
But such oddities are common among many scientists. But only a few knew that mathematicians liked men.
In 1941, in an effort to end his cravings, Turing proposed to a colleague Joan Clark. The girl agreed and was not embarrassed even by the fact that, in a fit of frankness, Turing admitted to homosexual inclinations. But such a reaction changed the scientist’s own decision - he terminated the engagement, deciding not to spoil Joan’s life.
IN post-war years Turing continued to solve problems both in the interests of the military department and in the name of “peaceful science.”
Standard interpretation of the Turing test. Photo: Public Domain
In 1948 Turing writes chess program for a computer that does not yet exist. In 1950, he proposed an empirical test, the purpose of which was to determine the thinking capabilities of a machine. The scientist’s idea was as follows: a computer can be considered to “think” if the person interacting with it cannot distinguish the computer from another person during the communication process. This test is called the Turing test.
By the early 1950s, Turing was at the zenith of his fame. He became the father-theorist of one of the world's first computers and became a member of the Royal Society of London.
Love and betrayal
Everything collapsed in 1952. For what happened, one can, of course, blame the British society of that time, which did not approve of homosexuality and punished it by law, but, on the other hand, Turing himself understood perfectly well what he was doing.
In January 1952, a 39-year-old scientist met a 19-year-old worker on the streets of Manchester. Arnold Murray. Turing liked the young man and invited him to dinner, offering to then continue their acquaintance at the scientist’s house. The worker agreed, but did not come. However, Turing was persistent, met Murray several more times and finally persuaded young man spend the night with him.
For some time, the scientist and the builder were lovers, and then Turing’s apartment was robbed, and Murray’s friends did it at his instigation.
The thieves apparently believed that Turing would not go to the police so as not to reveal his secret. But the scientist still called the police. Naturally, the relationship between Murray and Turing became known very quickly, and the mathematician did not deny that he slept with this man.
IN different times In England, homosexuality could lead to execution or life imprisonment. In the early 1950s, laws became more lenient, but open homosexual activity was severely punished under the so-called Labouchere Amendment, which penalized any sexual activity between two men.
The trial, which lasted several months, ended with a predictable guilty verdict. Turing was given the choice of prison or chemical castration.The scientist chose the second and over the course of a year of injections he turned into a person who is not interested in either boys or girls.
But this loss was small compared to the fact that Turing actually lost his job. The military refused his services, fearing that Soviet intelligence will catch him in the blue honey trap. The scientific community also began to ignore the genius of mathematics.
Idol of Jobs and the gay community
Turing spent his time playing Board games. Having lost everything, he stopped valuing life.
It is known that Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning, but how exactly he poisoned himself is unclear to this day. The scientist's mother was sure that her son died as a result of an accident, because Lately Turing became addicted to chemical experiments. Turing's fans still believe that he was killed. The matter is further complicated by the fact that no one tested the same apple found near the scientist’s body for the presence of cyanide.
Another genius of the 20th century was an admirer of Alan Turing's talent - Steve Jobs . And, according to some, the bitten apple on the Apple logo did not appear by chance. In this way, Jobs paid tribute to the memory of a man, without whose work there would have been no success for Apple.
IN beginning of XXI century in Great Britain, the rehabilitation of Alan Turing took place. In 2009, he expressed regret for the persecution of the scientist Prime Minister Gordon Brown. And after another four years Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain for charges of "obscenity."
As a result, a new unexpected turn occurred. Turing, declared “one of the main victims of global homophobia,” has become a symbol of fighters for the expansion of rights for the LGBT community.
Loud celebrations are held in Turing's honor mass actions, gay pride parades. The Enigma winner's homosexuality is now given more importance than his scientific work. There is nothing to be done, this is the call of the times.
English mathematician, logician, cryptographer, inventor of the Turing machine.
The son of a British official in India, Alan studied in France, England and then in the USA. Then many mathematicians tried to create an algorithm to determine the truth of statements. But Gödel managed to prove that any useful mathematical system of axioms is incomplete in the sense that there is a statement in it, the truth of which can neither be refuted nor confirmed. This led Turing to argue that there is no general method for determining truth and thus mathematics will always contain unprovable statements.
In his work, Turing proposed a design for a simple device that has all the basic properties of a modern information system: software control, memory, and step by step method actions. This imaginary machine, called a Turing machine, is used in the theory of automata or computers.
When Turing returned to England from the USA, World War. One of the most important weapons of this war was the Colossus computer under the Ultra project, which began in 1943 to crack the highly complex German codes. The work of this system significantly helped the Allies in the fight against the Nazi invaders.
After the war in 1945, Alan led the project to create the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) computer, and in 1948 Turing began working with MADAM (Manchester Automatic DigitAl Machine), a computer with the most large memory in the world at that time. Alan's work on the construction of the first computers and the development of programming methods was of invaluable importance, providing the basis for most research in the field of artificial intelligence. He believed that computers would eventually be able to think like humans and proposed simple check, known as the Turing test, evaluates the ability of a machine to think: talk to the computer and let it convince you that it is a person.
In 1952, Turing published the first part of his theoretical study development of forms of living organisms. But this work remained unfinished due to his suicide, apparently caused by persecution by British intelligence.
In the naive but beautiful film "Enigma" about love, war and secret services Turing is shown as main character Tom Jericho, played by Dougray Scott.
Scientific achievements and discoveries
Stopping problem
It was discovered that computers cannot solve every mathematical problem after all. Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm for solving the stopping problem for any possible input could not exist.
Decoding the Enigma code
During World War II, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, a British cryptographic center, where he headed one of five groups, Hut 8, involved in deciphering Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe messages encoded by the German Enigma cipher machine as part of Project Ultra. Turing's contributions to the cryptographic analysis of the Enigma algorithm were based on earlier cryptanalysis previous versions encryption machine, made in 1938 by the Polish cryptanalyst Marian Rejewski.
In early 1940, he developed the Bomba deciphering machine, which made it possible to read Luftwaffe messages. The principle of operation of the “Bomb” was to enumerate possible variants of the cipher key and attempt to decrypt the text if part of the plaintext or the structure of the decrypted message was known. The search for keys was carried out by rotating mechanical drums, accompanied by a sound similar to the ticking of a clock, which is why the “Bomb” got its name. For each possible meaning key given by the positions of the rotors (the number of keys was approximately 1019 for the land-based Enigma and 1022 for the encryption machines used in submarines), "Bomb" performed a check against a known plaintext, performed electrically. Bletchley's first Turing Bomb was launched on 18 March 1940. The design of Turing's Bombs was also based on the design of Rejewski's machine of the same name.
Six months later, they managed to crack the more resistant Kriegsmarine code. Later, by 1943, Turing made a significant contribution to the creation of a more advanced deciphering electronic computer, the Colossus, used for the same purposes.
Even reading coded German messages, in March 1943 Britain stood on the brink of defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic and the entire Second World War. It is likely that without deciphering the Enigma code, the course of this war would have been different.
Creation of one of the first computers
In 1947, Turing created one of the world's first computers in Manchester.[source?]
Turing machine
Any intuitively computable function is partially recursive, or, equivalently, can be computed using some Turing machine.
Alan Turing proposed (known as the Church–Turing thesis) that any algorithm in the intuitive sense of the word can be represented by an equivalent Turing machine. Clarification of the concept of computability based on the concept of a Turing machine (and other equivalent concepts) opened up the possibility of rigorously proving the algorithmic unsolvability of various mass problems (that is, problems of finding a unified method for solving a certain class of problems, the conditions of which can vary within certain limits). The simplest example of an algorithmically unsolvable mass problem is the so-called algorithm applicability problem (also called the stopping problem). It is as follows: you need to find general method, which would allow for an arbitrary Turing machine (specified by its program) and an arbitrary initial state of the tape of this machine to determine whether the operation of the machine will be completed in a finite number of steps, or will continue indefinitely.
Artificial intelligence theory
Turing is the founder of the theory of artificial intelligence.
A Turing machine is an extension of the finite state machine model and is capable of simulating (given the appropriate program) any machine whose action is to transition from one discrete state to another.
Turing test
The Turing test is a test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 in his article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" to test whether a computer is intelligent in the human sense.
Persecution for homosexuality and Turing's death
Turing was homosexual. At the time in the UK, homosexual intercourse was illegal and homosexuality was considered mental illness. In 1952 he was charged. Turing was convicted and given the choice between prison and hormone therapy, which was essentially chemical castration. Turing chose therapy. One of the effects was growing breasts and decreased libido. In addition, as a result of his conviction, he lost the right to work in the field of cryptography.
A year after his conviction, he died from cyanide poisoning, which was apparently contained in an apple, half of which Turing ate before his death. He was found to have committed suicide. However, his mother believed that he was poisoned accidentally because he always handled chemicals carelessly. There is a version according to which Turing specifically chose this method to give his mother the opportunity not to believe in suicide.[source?]
Apple Corporation symbol - bitten with right side The apple is one of the most recognizable symbols in civilized countries. This logo is surrounded by many rumors and mysteries. Many see in it a hint of the brilliant Newton (according to legend, he discovered the law of universal gravitation after an apple fell on the top of his head). Some are inclined to see the apple as a symbol of the Fall. One of the founders Apple, the late Steve Jobs, always deftly avoided commenting on the logo. Why? Perhaps he feared that if the real subtext of the symbol became known to the general public, the corporation could suffer multimillion-dollar losses...
Genius of pure mathematics
Few people know that Steve Jobs' idol was the English mathematician Alan Turing. The brilliant scientist is sometimes called the “father of computer science and artificial intelligence.” In 1941, Turing, according to the official version, committed suicide by biting into an apple filled with cyanide. According to other sources, it was not suicide, but murder. Be that as it may, until recently Alan was considered scientific world a pariah because of his homosexual preferences. His fan, Steve Jobs, could not help but understand: Apple is actively entering the markets of countries where sodomy is not held in high esteem (Russia, China, countries of Eastern Europe). And therefore he avoided questions about the logo in every possible way. He probably feared that the true meaning of a bitten apple might scare off buyers. This version is supported by the fact that only in 1998 the corporation’s logo became monochromatic; until that time, the apple was painted in rainbow colors.
How did Alan Turing earn respect from Steve Jobs and other “monsters” of the modern industry? Like many geniuses, Alan Turing, born in India in 1912, was an unconventional child. He was not interested in anything other than mathematics. Alan's parents, having moved to England, tried to make the boy a comprehensively gifted person: against his wishes, he was sent to the liberal arts school in Sherborne. By the age of 13, Alan, who was not even taught the basics of calculus (!), was solving the most complex mathematical problems in his head, which baffled his teachers. He was called the worst student in the class, and the director wrote in his description: “He will undoubtedly become a real problem for the community.”
After leaving school, Turing studied first at Cambridge College (he entered there only the second time), then in France and the USA. At the age of 23, he already defended his doctoral dissertation in mathematics, and after that, within two years, he developed the theory of “logical computing machines.” In the future, Turing “machines” will become a mandatory part of curricula for future cybernetics. The world owes Alan many purely mathematical solutions.
How a scientist outmaneuvered the Nazis
In 1939, the British War Department set Alan a task: it was necessary to unravel the secret of “Enigma” - a machine that German cipher coders used to encode radio messages during naval and air force operations. The scouts managed to get a copy of Enigma, but they still could not read the intercepted German radiograms. Turing was offered to head the department “ British school codes and ciphers”, which was supposed to help solve this problem and provide complete freedom actions.
Alan was overcome with real hunting excitement. He invited several friends to the group - chess players and mathematicians. Rolling up their sleeves, these, the first in the world, say modern language, hackers got to work. It was possible to partially “break” Enigma a year later. The British could now read more than half of the German codes. And in 1943, Turing’s group “hacked” a more complex version of Enigma - it was used by German submariners. The British command gained access to almost all the information exchanged between the Germans. This undoubtedly contributed to the success of the British fleet and, of course, reduced human losses tenfold. Britain duly appreciated Turing's contribution to the victory. He was awarded an order and included in the group developing the EMB.
1951 was a real triumph for Alan. One of the world's first computers started working in Manchester, and the scientist had a hand in its creation: he wrote the software. That same year, Turing was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In addition, he never stopped working on reconnaissance. Now he was working on the Soviet direction and was about to develop an algorithm for recognizing ciphergrams.
Fatal injection
Just like in the good old romantic films, everything good suddenly collapsed. In 1952, Alan's apartment was robbed. Soon during the investigation, the police detained the criminal. It turned out to be one of the friends of the scientist's lover. Yes, Turing had been a confirmed homosexual for many years (a fairly common phenomenon in high society Britain) and didn’t even really hide it. In those years in England, sodomy was considered a criminal offense. In most cases, society turned a blind eye to “sins” of this kind. In order not to fall under the harsh tribute of justice, you just had to hide your unconventional orientation and not announce it publicly.
Alan Turing, contrary to all the norms in force in society, went for broke: he loudly declared himself a homosexual. However, there was plenty of evidence, in addition to a sincere confession: the police seized from the thief the scientist’s intimate correspondence, which he had conducted with his numerous lovers over a number of years. Is it any wonder that the society that Turing challenged dealt with him mercilessly?
Loud trial lasted for several months. No one was interested in the fate of the thief anymore: Britain, with bated breath, wondered about Alan's future. Will the law really punish a war hero, a leading codebreaker, a world-famous scientist? The judge was adamant. Turing, according to the laws of the time, was offered the choice of two years in prison or chemical castration. Alan chose the second and soon received an injection that made him impotent forever. In addition, Turing was fired from the civil service and banned from teaching at the University of Manchester. The scientist almost lost his good name, and the meaning of life, and livelihood.
After some time, the team of teachers took Alan on bail, and he was allowed to resume teaching. However, the scientist’s psyche was broken: for the rest of his life he lived as a recluse, playing various board games. Alan was embarrassed to go out in public - after an injection of a drug that included female hormones, his breasts began to grow.
“ Forgive us, you deserved better!”
But he didn’t have long to live; on June 8, 1954, the scientist’s body was discovered in his house. Nearby, on the night table, lay a bitten apple, which, as an examination later showed, was soaked potassium cyanide. The official version is that Alan committed suicide, the unofficial version is that he was killed by envious people. True, none of the supporters of the version of violent death explains what was envied at that time: Turing was actually hunted down, trampled and consigned to official oblivion.
The scientist’s good name was returned much later. And the shameful rumor took away main role in the creation of electromagnetic waves and software American professor Norbert Wiener, pushing the “non-standard” Turing into the background.
Steve Jobs, by making a bitten apple painted in rainbow colors as the logo of Apple Corporation, was decades ahead of the authorities. It was only in 2009 that British Prime Minister Gordan Brown called Turing “the most notorious victim of homophobia” and said: “On behalf of the British government and all those who live free thanks to Alan’s contribution, I say with all sincerity: forgive us, you deserved much better!”
Name: Alan Turing
Age: 41 years old
Activity: mathematician, logician, cryptographer
Family status: wasn't married
Alan Turing: biography
Mathematician Alan Turing, in the text of his work “On Computable Numbers,” published in 1936, proved that there is no and cannot be a universal method for establishing truth. mathematical science. Mathematics will always contain problems that cannot be solved. Turing's work on this issue is recognized as the foundation of academic research in the field of artificial intelligence.
Childhood and youth
Alan Mathieson Turing was born in Maida Vale, London on 23 June 1912. School teachers recognized Alan's extraordinary mental abilities, but did not attach any importance to them. The boy attended a prestigious school in the city of Shernborn, where he showed particular interest in the exact sciences. The biography of the scientist contains a number of interesting facts. The young man's first day of school coincided with the start of a strike, and he was forced to cycle 100 km to spend the night safely in a hotel, away from the rioting crowd.
After Sherborne, Turing became one of the students at King's College (Cambridge University), where he studied for three years. Based on the results of defending his master's thesis, in which Alan proved the central limit theorem, the young man was admitted to the teaching staff.
Young Alan, although he devoted all his time to science and had the image of an eccentric among his colleagues, played sports in his spare time - a photo of 1946 was preserved in the British archives, where a young man ran a marathon.
The science
In 1936, Turing’s work “On Computable Numbers” was published, in the text of which Alan introduced the concept universal machine(later called a Turing machine). The Turing machine calculated everything possible; the concept of the modern personal computer is based on a design developed by Turing.
Turing then focused on studying mathematics and cryptology at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. After defending his doctorate at Princeton University in 1938, the young scientist returned to Cambridge, where he took a part-time job at the Government Communications Center in the UK. government organization, who worked on breaking codes.
Personal life
1952 Turing opened the door and froze on the threshold of his apartment: everything in the rooms was turned upside down, the upholstery was ripped open. There was a note waiting on the owner's desk warning that if Turing contacted the police, he would be intimate secret will be revealed to the whole world. It was not yet known that the brilliant scientist was gay. The scientist did not allow himself to be blackmailed and nevertheless called the law enforcement officers. The burglar turned out to be an acquaintance of Alan's lover. But the robbery problem faded into the background when police found evidence of an unconventional crime in the apartment. sexual orientation men.
In the early 1950s, homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom, so when Turing admitted to the police that he had sexual relations with the perpetrator, 19-year-old Arnold Murray, the scientist was charged with gross indecency. After his arrest, Turing was forced to choose between forced treatment hormonal drugs to reduce libido or imprisonment. Alan chose the former and soon underwent chemical castration through injections of the synthetic hormone estrogen for a year, which ultimately rendered him impotent.
As a result of publicity about the scientist's sexual orientation, he was prohibited from continuing to work with cryptography at GCCS.
The Second World War
During World War II, Turing became a leading participant in breaking German codes. He worked at Bletchley Park, the wartime GCCS station, where he made five major discoveries in the field of cryptanalysis, including the development of an electromechanical device used to decipher signals from the German Enigma cipher machine. The work released by Alan Turing, dedicated to the decipherment of Enigma, was nicknamed “Prof’s Book” by his colleagues (Prof was his own name behind his back).
Alan Turing deciphered the Enigma machine code Turing's contributions to codebreaking did not stop there: Alan also wrote two papers on mathematical approaches to codebreaking, which were considered strategic assets of the Codex and the Cypher School (later known as Government Headquarters). It was only in April 2012 that the Government Communications Center published these developments in the National Archives of the United Kingdom.
Towards the end of the war, Turing moved to London, where he worked at the National Physical Laboratory. Among Alan's notable contributions to science during his time there, Turing led the design of an automatic computing engine and ultimately developed a groundbreaking plan for a computer with associated software products.
Although full version ACE was not developed; its concept was used as a model by technology corporations around the world for several more years, influencing the design of the English Electric DEUCE and the American Bendix G-15, which are considered the world's first personal computers.
Turing continued to hold senior positions in the mathematics department and computing laboratory at the University of Manchester for some time. He first began studying the problem of artificial intelligence in the 1950 article “ Computer Engineering and Intelligence" and proposed an experiment known as the "Turing Test" - an attempt to create a standard for the development of intelligence information for the technical industry. Behind last decades The test has had a significant impact on discussions about artificial intelligence.
Death of Alan Turing
Having lost the opportunity to work in science, Turing fell into depression. In addition, while taking hormonal drugs, the man began to lose hair, lost his appetite and sexual desire, and began to grow breasts.
Turing died on June 7, 1954. Mrs. Christie (Alan's housekeeper) prepared breakfast for the owner and went up to the bedroom to call Turing to the table, but found the scientist's lifeless body in bed, and a bitten apple lay on the bedside table. After a post-mortem examination, it was revealed that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning.
Remains of an apple were found near the body, although no parts of the apple were found in the stomach. An autopsy revealed “fluid contents in the stomach that smelled strongly of bitter almonds, as well as a cyanide solution.” The smell of bitter almonds was also noted in other organs. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was asphyxia due to cyanide poisoning. The official version was declared suicide.
In a June BBC article, philosophy professor and Turing expert Jack Copeland argued that Turing's death may have been an accident: there is no cyanide in the apples, nothing in the records last days Turing did not have any thoughts of suicide, but Alan had cyanide stored at home for chemical experiments.
However, another version is also known. When World War II ended, Turing worked to decipher Soviet codes. Researchers suggest that KGB agents staged a robbery in the scientist's apartment and led him into a trap, as a result of which work on deciphering Soviet codes stopped. And there were no other scientists of such a level in Great Britain at that time to continue Turing’s work.
Awards
- Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
- Fellow of the Royal Society of London
Memory
- On September 10, 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown posthumously exonerated his outstanding compatriot Alan Turing.
- The term "computer" modern world indebted to Alan Turing.
- The prestigious award for contributions to computer science ($250 thousand) is named after Turing.
- According to one version, the bitten apple (Apple logo) became a tribute to the memory of the brilliant scientist from the outside.
- The life of the brilliant scientist is reflected in the film “The Imitation Game,” where the role of Turing was played by a British actor.
Alan Turing biography briefly and Interesting Facts from the life of an English mathematician, cryptographer, logician, are presented in this article.
Alan Turing biography briefly
Alan Mathieson Turing was born in London on June 23, 1912, into the family of an official serving in India. The young man received his education at the prestigious English Sherborne School, showing talents in mathematics and chemistry. In 1931 he entered college at Cambridge University.
Having defended his dissertation in 1935 on the topic “The Central Limit Theorem of Probability Theory”, he became a member Scientific Society King's College. During this period, he began to engage in research in mathematical logic. A year later, Alan wrote a paper “On computable numbers, with an application to the solvability problem,” in which he introduced a new mathematical concept: “the abstract equivalent of an algorithm” or “computable function.” Later it received another name - “Turing machine”. The result of his research became the impetus for opening a debate on the theory of automata and became the fundamental basis for digital computers that appeared in the 40s of the twentieth century.
Turing continued his studies in the USA, entering Princeton University. Here, under the guidance of logician and mathematician Alonzo Church, he received his PhD in 1938. Returning to Britain, Turing begins to collaborate with the government's Code and Cipher School.
In 1939, the British War Department set him the task of unraveling the Enigma codes, a special encryption device that was used to encrypt radio messages in the German Luftwaffe and navy. Six months later, Turing's team developed the Bomba device, which read almost all Luftwaffe radiograms. Another year later, the mathematician cracked Enigma.
The scientist also worked on the development of special ciphers for correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt in the period 1942 - 1943. For his services after the end of the war, he received the title of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 4th class.
In 1945, mathematics was accepted by the London National Physical Laboratory. Here he led the development of the new ACE computing device. In 1947, Alan developed Short Code Instructions, which pioneered the use of a programming language. A year later, he was invited to the University of Manchester to the position of director of the computer laboratory, where the automatic digital machine “Madame” was being designed - a computer with a huge memory, by the standards of that time. He created several programs for it using alphanumeric code.
In addition, Turing is considered the founder of artificial intelligence. The scientist created a thought experiment that is still famous today - the Turing test, which seeks answers to the question “does a machine think?” In 1951 he was elected a member of the Royal Scientific Society.
IN last years During his life he became interested in biology and worked on the creation of a chemical theory of morphogenesis. But he did not have time to finish it, having made only a few sketches. Turing was robbed in 1952. And during the criminal trial he was forced to admit his gay. In those days, this was harshly condemned and punishable by prison. Due to the condemnation that fell on him, Alan lost his job in the field of cryptography. From a brilliant and sought-after person, he turned into a pitiful semblance of himself. His dead body found at home on June 8, 1954. It is believed that the great mathematician committed suicide.
Alan Turing interesting facts
- Knitted and during the war years I knitted mittens for myself, since new things were in short supply then.
- Contemporaries describe him as a not very charming person, slightly eccentric, endlessly hardworking and rather bilious.
- Turing had allergies. However, during the flowering period of the plants, he did not take antihistamines, but put on a gas mask.
- While working at Bletchley Park, he would strap his mug to the radiator to prevent it from being stolen.
- One day, a mathematician learned that the exchange rate of the English foot was rapidly falling and melted all his coins into a silver bar. He buried it in the park, but he completely forgot where exactly.
- He was a good athlete and took part in the marathon.
- When it was discovered that Turing was homosexual, the court sentenced him to either prison or chemical castration by taking estrogen injections. He chose the latter.
- Never married. But he was engaged to Joan Clark, with whom he worked together on breaking Enigma. He told her about his unconventional hobbies a couple of days after the engagement. But that didn't deter her. They were connected platonic love and spiritual connections. But they soon separated. A little later, Turing invited Joan to start over, but the woman refused. Despite the fact that she married another man, she was with Alan until the very end, remaining on warm, friendly terms with him.
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