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ALAN TURING (1912-1954)

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ALAN TURING (1912-1954)

Alan Turing was not a well known figure during his lifetime

But today he is famous for being an eccentric yet passionate British mathematician and he is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence

He was born in London and was educated at a top private school.In 1931 he entered the University of Cambridge to study mathematics. He worked on the probability theory and took the Mathematics degree with distinction

In 1936, Turing delivered a paper, in which he presented the notion of a universal machine (later called the Turing machine) capable of computing anything that is computable

The central concept of the modern computer was based on Turings paper

After two years at Princeton, developing ideas about secret ciphers, he returned to Britain and joined the governments code-breaking department

During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking organization

and developed a new machine (the Bombe) capable of breaking Enigma messages

He played a pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements

It has been estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by as many as two to four years

In March 1946 Turing produced a detailed design for what was called the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)This was a digital computer in the modern sense, storing programs in its memory

In 1952 he was prosecuted for homosexual acts, when such behavior was still a criminal act in the UK. He was forced to accept treatment with estrogen injections (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison

Alan Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning

On September 10, 2009 the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public statement on behalf of the British government, posthumously apologized to Turing for prosecuting him as a homosexual

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