Transcript ALAN TURING Jutina Awe COMP 1631

Early history
He was born as Alan Mathison Turing on June 23rd 1912 in
Paddington, London.(website)
Turing was highly educated. He attended Kings College, Cambridge in 1931
to
study Mathematics.(website)
Turing was known as a brilliant thinker. Apart from Mathematics, he also
studied
Philosophy, Psychology, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.(website)
His personality was to have something cool to work with that has to do with
machines.(website)
But he was more interested in deeper understanding of how computer works
and the
future of computers.(website)
Early History
Inetellectually, Turing was an happy man but personally, he was sad.
He was homosexual and during his time homosexuality relationship was a
crime and
therefore illegal.(website)
So he had an alternative to take female hormones to avoid going to
prison.(website)
But he was at big risk with his personal life.
Early History
In 1937, after Turing graduated from Cambridge studying Mathematics in 1934 he
wrote a famous paper: "On Computable Numbers" with an application to the
"Entscheidungsproblem", which postulated the Turing Machine.(website)
The Turing Machine was later useful during the war. (website)
The Entscheidungsproblem
The Entscheidungsproblem was published by Alonzo Church and Alan Turing in 1936
- 1937 to further describe the work of David Hilbert's challenge problem.(The
man who knew too much)
The Entscheidungsproblem is commonly referred to by its original German name,
which means "decision problem"(The man who knew too much)
Entscheidungsproblem is a concept of a mathematical algorithm, an arithmetic
statement that can be either true or false. (website)
The Entscheidungsproblem idea introduced the concept of the Turing machine. And
latter was computable with the Turing machine(website).
The Entscheidungsproblem
By this problem, Hilbert meant that within that system, any true statement could
be formally proven and any false statement could be disproven. ( The Man who
knew too much) (The man who knew too much)
He meant that, within the system, no invalid statement, such as 2+2 = 5 or 1 =
0, could be arrived at through a valid process. (The man who knew too much)
Simply meaning, within that system, there could be shown to be a "definite
method" by means of which the truth or falsity of any statement might be
ascertained. (The man who knew too much)
The Entscheidungsproblem
In the 1930's when he began his work on the Entscheidungsproblem, the word
"computer" had a different meaning from todays meaning. It meant someone who
did computations. (The man who knew too much)
Because in the1930's computations took long hour of human labor in which today's
simple addition problem's was solved using Charles Babbage abacus which later
played a big influence in the invention of Turing's "universal machine"(The man
who knew too much)
The Turing Machine
With the influence of the Entscheidungsproblem and Charles Babbage abacus,
Turing invented a machine named the Turing machine which was used to perform
specific algorithm and simple arithmetic problems like 2 + 2 (The man who knew
too much)
The Turing Machine and how it works.
Each number was represented in Binary system. (The man who knew too much)
The machine was divided into 4 columns. (The man who knew too much)
The first column is the m-configuration lettered from A - D, the second column
is for symbol which is left blank. And the third column is where the action of
the algorithm takes place. Lastly, the fourth column is the New m-configuration
which prints the answers. (The man who knew too much)
Later in the years, an advanced set of the machines was made which worked
better. They still did the same thing but it was more advanced than the first
set of machines. (78, the man who knew too much)
The newest machines at that time later performed derivatives and differentiation
problems (78, the man who knew too much)
The Bombe Machine (1939 - 45)
The day after the war broke out Turing "joined up" full time at the
Government
Code and Cypher School, which had just moved to Bletchley Park. He
was in the
first handful of the stream of able mathematicians drafted into their
code-breaking operations. (website)
In the next three years Turing was the key figure in the continual battle to
decode messages encrypted by the increasingly complex Enigma
machines, using
the 'Bombe' machine
The Bombe was an electro-mechanical device, developed by Turing with
help from
another mathematician W. G. Welchman, inspired by the Polish 'Bomba'.
The
periods when the Naval code could be broken saw dramatic reductions in
the
shipping losses from the Atlantic convoys so essential to the conduct of the
Allied war effort. (website)
The Bombe Machine
By the time Turing returned to the U.K., the ability to decode had been
restored, under his deputy, and his deputy remained in charge. Turing moved
on
to a general consultancy role, and to work on a Speech Secrecy system. The
American system comprised three roomfuls of equipment (one each for the
White
House, Pentagon and Whitehall), and Turing thought up a much smaller
electro-mechanical device, about the size of a typewriter, which would
obviously make the facility more widely available! (website)
Honours
In 1945, he was awarded the O.B.E for his contribution in the war(website)
In 1951, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (website)
Final Years of Turing and His
Legacy
Afterwards his personal life caught up with him. In june 1954, he died from
cyanide poisoning, with a verdict concluding suicides the cause; though he did
legitimately have cyanide in the house in connection with chemical experiments.
(Website).
Apology
In September 2009, PM Gordon Brown announced a sincere apology for the
mistreatment of Alan Turing, the World War II code breaker, for being gay.
(bbc)
Slide 16 ACM Turing Award.
Today, He is well know for his brilliant contribution to computer and now
individuals receive an award in honour of him called the ACM Turing ward.
Biblography
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8249792.stm
(bbc)
http://www.computer50.org/mark1/turi
ng.html#ace(website)
The Man who knew too much by David
Leavitt