home

English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. 6/23/1912 to 6/7/1954
 * Alan Mathison Turing -1954 **

Alan Mathison Turing was born June 23rd 1912 in Maida Vale, London, England (United Kingdom) where he resided. He was known for being a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was very influential in the development of computer science while providing a formalization of the concept of the algorithm s and computation with the Turing machine. He played an important position as a forerunner to the creation of the modern computer. Alan’s nationality was British although he was almost born in India. As a young man, Alan showed sign of genius and a subtle stubbornness in school because of his inclination towards math and science in a religious school (St. Michael’s day school), and the fact that he didn’t like the style of teaching; they were focusing on history and the classics, when Turing was looking into the future of new hopes and ideas. Even with a penchant to disagree, Alan still showed signs of genius where he displayed to greater lengths as he got older. **Extraordinary Thinker**

Turing had a scientific/ mathematical mind that carried him from elementary school at age six through an independent high school where he was able to solve complex problems. He even reviewed and fully understood Albert Einstein’s work, even giving an in depth meaning to Newton’s laws of motion from writings that weren’t finished. In 1931, Turing went to King’s College in Cambridge (right illustration) as an undergrad where he graduated with first honors in mathematics, and in 1935 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society due to an exemplary dissertation on the central limit theorem. From 1936 to July 1938, Turing spent much of his time at the Institute for Advance Study, in Princeton, New Jersey. He studied under an Alonzo Church. Turing not just studied and mastered mathematics, but he studied cryptology and built three of four stages of an electromechanical binary multiplier. Turing received his Doctorate from Princeton and introduced the notion of relative computing. Turing went on to work part-time with the Government Code and Cypher School. **Occupational Skills**

During the WWll, Turing was a main participant in the efforts at Bletchley Park to crack German ciphers. Turing worked in Poland we he assisted cryptanalysis work with the help of Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski from Cipher Bureau. Before the war, he contributed several inspirations into breaking the Enigma machine and the Lorenz SZ 40/42 (a Teletype cipher attachment), and was, for a time, head of Hut 8, the section responsible for reading German and cracking German naval signals. Since September 1938, Turing worked on the issue of the German Enigma machine, and worker in conjunction with Dilly Knox, a senior GCCS code breaker. On 4th September 1939, Turing reported to Bletchley Park, the wartime station of GCCS, the day after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. **Turing–Welchman bombe ** After a few weeks at Bletchley Park, Turing had specified an electromechanical machine which could help break Enigma faster than the original bomba from 1932; the newly created [|bombe], derived from the original Polish-designed bomba. The bombe, with new features promoted by mathematician Gordon Welchman, became one of the primary tools used to attack Enigma-protected message traffic. The bombe searched for possibly correct settings used for an Enigma message, and used a suitable 'crib', or a fragment of probable plaintext. For each possible setting of the rotors (which had of the order of 1019/ 1022 for the four-rotor U-boat variant), the bombe performed a chain of logical deductions based on the crib, administered electrically. The bombe detected when a contradiction had occurred, and ruled out that setting, moving in order. Most of the possible settings would cause contradictions and be discarded, leaving only a few to be investigated. Turing's bombe was first installed on 18 March 1940, and more than two hundred bombes were in operation by the end of the war. **Computers, Chess, and the Test** In 1948, Turing was appointed reader in the Mathematics Department at Manchester. In 1949 he became deputy director of the computing laboratory at the University of Manchester, and worked on software for one of the earliest stored-program computers—the Manchester Mark 1. During this time he continued to do more uncanny work, and in "Computing machinery and intelligence" Turing addressed the issue of artificial intelligence, and proposed an experiment now known as the Turing test; an attempt to create a standard for a machine to be called intelligent. The idea was that a computer could be said to think if it could trick the researcher into thinking that the conversation was with a human. In the paper, Turing suggested that rather than building a program to imitate the adult mind, it would be better to produce a simpler one to imitate the mind of a child, then to subject it to knowledge. A form of the Turing test is widely used on the Internet; the CAPTCHA test is intended to determine whether the user is man or a machine. Regarding Chess, in 1948, Turing, working with a former undergraduate colleague, began writing a Chess program for a computer that did not exist. In 1952, without a computer powerful enough to run the program, Turing played a game in which he simulated the computer, taking about half an hour per move. The game was recorded with the program losing, but it opened the door to more research and stronger Chess programs.

The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest electronic computers, developed at the [|University of Manchester] from the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) or "Baby", the world's first electronic stored-program computer. It was also called the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine, or MADM. Work began in August 1948, and the first version was operational by April 1949; a program written to search for Mersenne primes ran error-free for nine hours on the night of 16/17 June 1949.

The machine's successful operation was widely reported in the British press, which used the phrase "electronic brain" in describing it to their readers. The Mark 1 was initially developed to provide a computing resource within Manchester University, to allow researchers to experience the use of computers. **Remembrance** Alan M. Turing’s life and achievements will be remembered for mathematical and logical skills, his attributes as a cryptologist in the war, his intuitive ability to see what the future might or should hold regarding computing, and to computer science which he loved. A structure was built in honor of his name; the Alan Turing Building at the University of Manchester. Above all else, he will be remembered and individual ahead of his time; a great thinker who has contributed to the world of math and science.

**<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Invention **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-weight: normal;">Turing–Welchman bombe ** **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Definition ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Noun/ Electromechanical enigma breaker <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">**Invention**: Manchester Mark 1 **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Definition ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Stored-program computer
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Function ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-weight: normal;">: ** To attack enigma-protected message traffic during WWII.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Patent ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-weight: normal;">: **312751 284.294 **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Inventor ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Function ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-weight: normal;">: ** One of the world’s first electronic stored-program computers as a computing recourse, and to give users a chance to gain computer experience
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Patent ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-weight: normal;">: **US patent 3120606
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Inventor ****<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-weight: normal;">: ** The University of Manchester

**Resources**:

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Alan Turing.” bing. Wikipedia. 2007. Retrieved on 8/10/2010 from <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Manchester Mark 1” bing. Wikipedia. 2009. Retrieved on 8/10/2010 from <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">“The Turing/Welchman Bombe” Tony Sale 2010. Codes and Ciphers.org. Retrieved on 8/10/2010 from <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[]