Accomplishments Of Alan Turing
You could see him on the street: an ordinary man, but what he hid behind his coat were his accomplishments that would make an impact so big on the world that you would of wished you said hello. This was Alan Turing. He was an ordinary man who made tremendous accomplishments during his lifetime that contributed towards computer science. He has been interested in science ever since he was young, which influenced him throughout his life. His incredible thinking during World War II led to his success in the computer science world. When he ended his life, he wouldn’t have expected the reaction the world had to his machine and what his machine led to. Alan Turing’s short term plan to decrypt enigma, remodeled the idea of what a computer can do, and
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ended up making a machine that led to the start of the computer age.
His aspirations to dive into the science world when he was older were highly influenced by his childhood. Alan Turing was born on June 23rd 1912 in London, England to his parents, Julius and Ethel Turing . He had one brother named John. Julius worked for the Indian Civil Service. This required him to be in India. Julius and Ethel lived in India earlier in their lives but came back England to give birth to Alan . When Alan was young his parents moved back to India but decided that Alan and John were to stay in England. They stayed with an army couple, Colonel and Mrs. Ward . They lived in a large house called Baston Lodge in St Leonards-on-Sea . Mrs. Ward thought that Alan and John should be brought up as real men . Alan and John always fought, which caused Mrs. Ward to become very upset . When Alan was still quite young when he first read. He taught himself to read from a book called: Reading without Tears . The Turing family could afford very little. In 1922 Alan went to Hazelhurst, a school in the town of Sussex. “Hazelhurst was a small establishment of thirty-six boys of ages from nine to thirteen, run by the head master Mr. Darlington” John also attended Hazelhurst. While John enjoyed his time at Hazelhurst, Alan thought it was a distraction from other things he enjoyed doing . When he was 10 he started to love all things about science. The book, Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know, opened his eyes to science . He also enjoyed inventing things. He invented his own type of a fountain pen, which he used to write to his parents who were still in India . In 1926 he attended the Sherborne School in Sherborne, Dorset. While he was at this school, students and teachers criticized him. He was mainly criticized for his handwriting . He also struggled in English and Math. He struggled with math because he didn’t like to use the methods, to solve for problems that were taught by his teachers. Most of his time at this school he was criticized, but he also made an accomplishment. There were a lot of math competitions. He won almost every math prize he was able to win . When he was 14, he started to read Einstein’s papers on relativity, he also read about quantum mechanics in Eddingtons: The nature of physical world . In 1928 Alan met Christopher Morcom. Christopher was 17 and a year older than Alan, who was 16 at the time. They were very close. They liked to work on scientific ideas together. It was the first time Alan had found someone whom he could share his thoughts and ideas with . Sadly, Christopher died in February of 1930 because of bovine tuberculosis, which he obtained when he drank tainted milk . This was a very sad time for Alan not only because his friend just died, but also because Christopher was his first love . After he graduated he went to college and started his career in running.
Running was a favorite hobby that could have been a potential career. Alan was a gifted athlete. He was an excellent marathon runner with a best time of 2 hours and 46 minutes . He ran for a local club in Walton Surrey while working at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington. He also ran between London and Bletchley Park during World War II. He did this to help relieve stress. He later decided to try out for the 1948 Olympics. He tried out for the British Olympic Marathon team. At trials, he came in 5th. That year Britain took silver in the marathon when Thomas Richards ran for 2 hours and 35 minutes. Alan’s time was only 11 minutes slower then Thomas’s.
College gave Alan the opportunity to show off his skills in mathematics and science. He attended Kings College Cambridge from 1931 until 1934. He took mathematics as his undergraduate . In 1935 Alan was elected into the Junior Research Fellowship at Kings College Cambridge because of his thesis on the central limit theorem . “A Junior Research Fellowship is to offer men and women of exceptional intellectual caliber for whim the fellowship would be their first substantial paid academic or research appointment, an opportunity to pursue research for up to four years” During Alan’s time in this program, he worked on his first major paper. The paper was ‘On Computable Numbers and the Entscheidungsproblem’ . This paper was highly praised and celebrated. “This paper referred to David Hilbert’s program to demonstrate where mathematics is decidable – that is, whether there exist a definite method that is in principle capable of deciding the truth of any mathematical assertion.” Later that year Alan moved to Princeton University to study for a Ph.D. in mathematical logic . He completed his studies in 1938 and then moved back to England. At this time he was brought to Bletchley Park.
Alan’s work in decrypting Enigma is one of the most important accomplishments in history. “During World War II, the Germans developed a computer called Enigma, which generated constantly-changing codes that were impossible to break” In 1939 Alan joined the secret wartime headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. He was recruited to help break Enigma and win Britain the war. The polish had created a machine to break the Enigma code it was called Bomba . “It depended for its success on the German operating procedures, and a change on the procedures in Mat 1940 rendered the Bomba virtually useless.” Alan and the others who were also trying to decrypt Enigma designed an entirely different code-breaking machine called the Bombe . All the work Alan had done during the war, with the help of Alan’s machine, shortened the war by 2 years. This machine kept the allies knowing intelligence throughout the war. The Bombe helped cryptanalysts decode about 39,000 intercepted messages each month, which gained to more than 84,000 messages per month. This invention led to many of his other inventions.
All of Alan’s inventions led to the start of the computer age.
One of his first machines was the Automatic Computing Machine (ACE). He was enlisted to the National Physical Laboratory in London to design and progress the electric computer . “It was the first relatively complete specification of an electric stored-program general-purpose digital computer” The machine had less memory than Alan had originally intended . Although they were close, the NPL lost the race to build the world’s first working digital computer that also had a stored program . Another machine of Alan’s was called The Turing Machine. It was a simple computer. This machine was different then the ACE. The concept of the machine was amazing. “A device that could perform almost any mathematical task and duplicate the work of any other machine, including the human brain” This machine consisted of limitless memory . Alan believed this machine could do anything. At the time, most of the computers that were built were designed for one specific task. The idea of the machine is that it could adapt to many tasks . You can see the basis of this machine in modern …show more content…
computers.
Alan didn’t only create machines, but he also created a test. This test was called the Turing Test. This test challenged the capability of a machine to perform human-like. This test was based of his Turing Machine. “During the test, a human judge conducts a conversation with a human and a machine; if the judge cannot tell which is which, then the machine passes the test.” Alan believed that the machine was somewhat intelligent of the person could tell the machine from the person. This test is still used today in a competition. Alan’s success was cut off by his court trial.
Alan’s sexual identity played a big role in Alan’s life.
At the time homosexual acts were criminal offenses in the UK. The crime Alan committed was “Gross Indeceny contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885” . During the trial Alan made no serious denial or defense of his sexual relationship with a young man . His punishment was wither to go to prison or get injections of estrogen for a year. The estrogen was intended to neutralize his libido. He chose the estrogen injections because he did not want to stop his work. Alan tried to make this whole case not affect his work. His work was the most important to him.
Alan died June 7th 1954 because of potassium cyanide poisoning. The cyanide poisoning was found on a half eaten apple, which was beside him. It was decided that he committed suicide but no other motive was discovered. The idea of this being an accident was told to his mother, it was all she ever knew and thought. What she didn’t know was how the impact of Alan’s work was going to have on the
world.
Alan Turing’s legacy made a big impact in the world of computer science. There is a competition called the “Turing Completion”. Whoever wins the competition receives the “Loebner Prize”. The Loebner Prize is awarded for artificial intelligence. This is the first formal manifestation of the Turing Test. “In 1990 Hugh Loebner agreed with The Cambridge Center got Behavioral Studies to underwrite a contest designed to implement the Turing Test. Dr. Loebner pledged a Grand Prize of $100,000 and a Gold Medal for the first computer whose responses were indistinguishable from a human’s. The prize is awarded to the most human-like computer.” Another award is the ACM A.M. Turing Award. It is one of the most prestigious awards ACM hands out. “The A.M. Turing Award, the ACM’s most prestigious technical award, is given for major contributions of lasting importance to computing. This award was named in honor of Alan Mathison Turing. He made fundamental advances in computer architecture, algorithms, formalization of computing and artificial intelligence.”
It can be argued that the work that Alan completed during World War II was not needed. When Alan presented the idea of building an expensive machine, people thought he was crazy and turned it down. Something like this hadn’t been seen before in the UK. It is understandable that people would be hesitant for something like this to actually work. The normal procedure to try to decrypt enigma was safe and was very difficult, but people knew it might work. With this system being simple yet disappointing a new idea to decrypt enigma wasn’t wanted. No one had built a computer like machine before and it was very risky for people to bet on this idea.
This is true; no one at the time had built such a thing. Wasting time and money on a machine that people had no faith did not stop Alan from continuing to work on this machine. However, Alan building the machine paid off big time when Britain won the war. It saved millions of lives and sparked the start of a new revolution. It would have been a couple of years until someone had the ambition to build a computer-like machine. Alan’s work inspired many people’s ideas of what a computer can do.
Alan’s work during World War II created the new revolution of modern computers. What he did was not commonly seen which stimulated other scientists and science laboratory minds to create a machine like this. The concept of the Turing machine groups on the UK and the USA had started to create a Turing machine in hardware . More people around the world started to build a type of a universal stored program-computing machine. Mathematicians, engineers and scientists all started to get interested in this machine. Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann was one of the many mathematicians who wanted to build a machine like Alan’s . People who worked with Alan even saw the potential in the ACE machine; they thought it would be the Britain’s national computer . Alan’s start of the modern computer started a domino effect of computers.
Alan’s work to decode enigma started a new revolution of the computer. All of Alan’s work highly impacted the world, creating a machine that people use everyday. Alan’s short-term plan made a long term affect on the world. The world would be at a loss without the work of Alan. Alan Turing “the father of the modern computer” was a genius that got the world rolling in the development of the computer.
ended up making a machine that led to the start of the computer age.
His aspirations to dive into the science world when he was older were highly influenced by his childhood. Alan Turing was born on June 23rd 1912 in London, England to his parents, Julius and Ethel Turing . He had one brother named John. Julius worked for the Indian Civil Service. This required him to be in India. Julius and Ethel lived in India earlier in their lives but came back England to give birth to Alan . When Alan was young his parents moved back to India but decided that Alan and John were to stay in England. They stayed with an army couple, Colonel and Mrs. Ward . They lived in a large house called Baston Lodge in St Leonards-on-Sea . Mrs. Ward thought that Alan and John should be brought up as real men . Alan and John always fought, which caused Mrs. Ward to become very upset . When Alan was still quite young when he first read. He taught himself to read from a book called: Reading without Tears . The Turing family could afford very little. In 1922 Alan went to Hazelhurst, a school in the town of Sussex. “Hazelhurst was a small establishment of thirty-six boys of ages from nine to thirteen, run by the head master Mr. Darlington” John also attended Hazelhurst. While John enjoyed his time at Hazelhurst, Alan thought it was a distraction from other things he enjoyed doing . When he was 10 he started to love all things about science. The book, Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know, opened his eyes to science . He also enjoyed inventing things. He invented his own type of a fountain pen, which he used to write to his parents who were still in India . In 1926 he attended the Sherborne School in Sherborne, Dorset. While he was at this school, students and teachers criticized him. He was mainly criticized for his handwriting . He also struggled in English and Math. He struggled with math because he didn’t like to use the methods, to solve for problems that were taught by his teachers. Most of his time at this school he was criticized, but he also made an accomplishment. There were a lot of math competitions. He won almost every math prize he was able to win . When he was 14, he started to read Einstein’s papers on relativity, he also read about quantum mechanics in Eddingtons: The nature of physical world . In 1928 Alan met Christopher Morcom. Christopher was 17 and a year older than Alan, who was 16 at the time. They were very close. They liked to work on scientific ideas together. It was the first time Alan had found someone whom he could share his thoughts and ideas with . Sadly, Christopher died in February of 1930 because of bovine tuberculosis, which he obtained when he drank tainted milk . This was a very sad time for Alan not only because his friend just died, but also because Christopher was his first love . After he graduated he went to college and started his career in running.
Running was a favorite hobby that could have been a potential career. Alan was a gifted athlete. He was an excellent marathon runner with a best time of 2 hours and 46 minutes . He ran for a local club in Walton Surrey while working at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington. He also ran between London and Bletchley Park during World War II. He did this to help relieve stress. He later decided to try out for the 1948 Olympics. He tried out for the British Olympic Marathon team. At trials, he came in 5th. That year Britain took silver in the marathon when Thomas Richards ran for 2 hours and 35 minutes. Alan’s time was only 11 minutes slower then Thomas’s.
College gave Alan the opportunity to show off his skills in mathematics and science. He attended Kings College Cambridge from 1931 until 1934. He took mathematics as his undergraduate . In 1935 Alan was elected into the Junior Research Fellowship at Kings College Cambridge because of his thesis on the central limit theorem . “A Junior Research Fellowship is to offer men and women of exceptional intellectual caliber for whim the fellowship would be their first substantial paid academic or research appointment, an opportunity to pursue research for up to four years” During Alan’s time in this program, he worked on his first major paper. The paper was ‘On Computable Numbers and the Entscheidungsproblem’ . This paper was highly praised and celebrated. “This paper referred to David Hilbert’s program to demonstrate where mathematics is decidable – that is, whether there exist a definite method that is in principle capable of deciding the truth of any mathematical assertion.” Later that year Alan moved to Princeton University to study for a Ph.D. in mathematical logic . He completed his studies in 1938 and then moved back to England. At this time he was brought to Bletchley Park.
Alan’s work in decrypting Enigma is one of the most important accomplishments in history. “During World War II, the Germans developed a computer called Enigma, which generated constantly-changing codes that were impossible to break” In 1939 Alan joined the secret wartime headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. He was recruited to help break Enigma and win Britain the war. The polish had created a machine to break the Enigma code it was called Bomba . “It depended for its success on the German operating procedures, and a change on the procedures in Mat 1940 rendered the Bomba virtually useless.” Alan and the others who were also trying to decrypt Enigma designed an entirely different code-breaking machine called the Bombe . All the work Alan had done during the war, with the help of Alan’s machine, shortened the war by 2 years. This machine kept the allies knowing intelligence throughout the war. The Bombe helped cryptanalysts decode about 39,000 intercepted messages each month, which gained to more than 84,000 messages per month. This invention led to many of his other inventions.
All of Alan’s inventions led to the start of the computer age.
One of his first machines was the Automatic Computing Machine (ACE). He was enlisted to the National Physical Laboratory in London to design and progress the electric computer . “It was the first relatively complete specification of an electric stored-program general-purpose digital computer” The machine had less memory than Alan had originally intended . Although they were close, the NPL lost the race to build the world’s first working digital computer that also had a stored program . Another machine of Alan’s was called The Turing Machine. It was a simple computer. This machine was different then the ACE. The concept of the machine was amazing. “A device that could perform almost any mathematical task and duplicate the work of any other machine, including the human brain” This machine consisted of limitless memory . Alan believed this machine could do anything. At the time, most of the computers that were built were designed for one specific task. The idea of the machine is that it could adapt to many tasks . You can see the basis of this machine in modern …show more content…
computers.
Alan didn’t only create machines, but he also created a test. This test was called the Turing Test. This test challenged the capability of a machine to perform human-like. This test was based of his Turing Machine. “During the test, a human judge conducts a conversation with a human and a machine; if the judge cannot tell which is which, then the machine passes the test.” Alan believed that the machine was somewhat intelligent of the person could tell the machine from the person. This test is still used today in a competition. Alan’s success was cut off by his court trial.
Alan’s sexual identity played a big role in Alan’s life.
At the time homosexual acts were criminal offenses in the UK. The crime Alan committed was “Gross Indeceny contrary to Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885” . During the trial Alan made no serious denial or defense of his sexual relationship with a young man . His punishment was wither to go to prison or get injections of estrogen for a year. The estrogen was intended to neutralize his libido. He chose the estrogen injections because he did not want to stop his work. Alan tried to make this whole case not affect his work. His work was the most important to him.
Alan died June 7th 1954 because of potassium cyanide poisoning. The cyanide poisoning was found on a half eaten apple, which was beside him. It was decided that he committed suicide but no other motive was discovered. The idea of this being an accident was told to his mother, it was all she ever knew and thought. What she didn’t know was how the impact of Alan’s work was going to have on the
world.
Alan Turing’s legacy made a big impact in the world of computer science. There is a competition called the “Turing Completion”. Whoever wins the competition receives the “Loebner Prize”. The Loebner Prize is awarded for artificial intelligence. This is the first formal manifestation of the Turing Test. “In 1990 Hugh Loebner agreed with The Cambridge Center got Behavioral Studies to underwrite a contest designed to implement the Turing Test. Dr. Loebner pledged a Grand Prize of $100,000 and a Gold Medal for the first computer whose responses were indistinguishable from a human’s. The prize is awarded to the most human-like computer.” Another award is the ACM A.M. Turing Award. It is one of the most prestigious awards ACM hands out. “The A.M. Turing Award, the ACM’s most prestigious technical award, is given for major contributions of lasting importance to computing. This award was named in honor of Alan Mathison Turing. He made fundamental advances in computer architecture, algorithms, formalization of computing and artificial intelligence.”
It can be argued that the work that Alan completed during World War II was not needed. When Alan presented the idea of building an expensive machine, people thought he was crazy and turned it down. Something like this hadn’t been seen before in the UK. It is understandable that people would be hesitant for something like this to actually work. The normal procedure to try to decrypt enigma was safe and was very difficult, but people knew it might work. With this system being simple yet disappointing a new idea to decrypt enigma wasn’t wanted. No one had built a computer like machine before and it was very risky for people to bet on this idea.
This is true; no one at the time had built such a thing. Wasting time and money on a machine that people had no faith did not stop Alan from continuing to work on this machine. However, Alan building the machine paid off big time when Britain won the war. It saved millions of lives and sparked the start of a new revolution. It would have been a couple of years until someone had the ambition to build a computer-like machine. Alan’s work inspired many people’s ideas of what a computer can do.
Alan’s work during World War II created the new revolution of modern computers. What he did was not commonly seen which stimulated other scientists and science laboratory minds to create a machine like this. The concept of the Turing machine groups on the UK and the USA had started to create a Turing machine in hardware . More people around the world started to build a type of a universal stored program-computing machine. Mathematicians, engineers and scientists all started to get interested in this machine. Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann was one of the many mathematicians who wanted to build a machine like Alan’s . People who worked with Alan even saw the potential in the ACE machine; they thought it would be the Britain’s national computer . Alan’s start of the modern computer started a domino effect of computers.
Alan’s work to decode enigma started a new revolution of the computer. All of Alan’s work highly impacted the world, creating a machine that people use everyday. Alan’s short-term plan made a long term affect on the world. The world would be at a loss without the work of Alan. Alan Turing “the father of the modern computer” was a genius that got the world rolling in the development of the computer.