-
Born in Maida Vale, London to Ethel and Julius Turing.
-
From 1931 to 1934 Turing studied at Cambridge where he wrote "On Computable Numbers" which details a mathematical description of what he called a universal machine.
-
At age 23 Turing is elected a Fellow of Kings College.
-
Turing's automatic machines were abstract machines that would created specifically for computing real numbers.
-
Between 1936 and 1937 Turing came up with Turing machines abstract computational devices that would help investigate the limitations of what can be computed.
-
From 1936 to 1938 Turing studied at Princeton University where he was awarded a PhD in Mathematics.
-
After the War is declared Turing is asked to join the Government Codes and Ciphers school.
-
Turing along with the help of Gordon Welchman develops the Bombe a device that could cycle through thousands of Enigma settings and was used for decrypting messages sent by the German Enigma Machine.
-
Turing along with his colleagues managed to crack a more complicated German Enigma system that helped the Allies in the Battle of the Atlantic.
-
At the end of World War II Alan Turing was awarded Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his achievements during wartime.
-
In 1946 Turing joined the National Physics Laboratory and published a paper with the first detailed design of a stored-program computer an idea originally introduced by John Von Neumann. The stored-program computer as a concept was a program that could be electronical stored as a binary number on a memory device ultimately this idea led to digital computers being more powerful.
-
In 1950 Turing publishes "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" which details the Turing Test an attempt to develop a standard by which a machine could be considered intelligent. This paper created the groundwork for what would become the field of Artificial intelligence. His work also detailed some of the problems found in modern AI mainly how could intelligence arise from something that itself was routine.
-
In 1951 Turing is elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
-
Turing was arrested in 1952 for having a relationship with Arnold Murray and later admitted to “acts of gross indecency”. As an alternative to prison Turing underwent hormone treatment and chemical castration which had detrimental effects on him.
-
One of Turing's unfinished works was a mathematical theory of morphogenesis which would show "the consequences of non-linear equations for chemical reaction and diffusion” (Hodges, Alan Turing). Though he wasn't able to finish his research into this before he died.
-
Another one of Turing unfinished works was a new type of quantum physics that would include predictable and computable reduction which he hoped would bridge the gap in the theory that the brain is computable.
-
On June 8th 1954 Alan Turing body was found in his bed. Though its often stated that Turing died by suicide by consuming a cyanide laced apple there is no evidence to support this as the apple was never tested for cyanide and its documented that he often brought apples with him to bed.
