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Alan Turing is born
Alan Mathison Turing was born in June 23, 1912 in Maida Vale London, England. He was born to parents Julius Mathison Turing and Ethel Sara Turing (nee Stoney). Several years after his brother, John Ferrier Turing who was born in 1908. -
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Alan Turing's life
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Alan's Eduacation
Alan was first enrolled at St. Michael's Day school, located in Hastings. "He didn't do very well, getting poor grades because the focus was on Classic's and Literature." (Alan Turing - Timeline). Alan wanted to study more in different fields, such as Mathematics and Science, which at the time were considered out of the norm. When he was ten, however, he moved to Hazelhurst Preparatory School
which was more diverse in it's subjects. -
Christopher Morcom
"After one year of attending another school in Dorset, he befriended Christopher Morcom, who shared his deep interests in Science and math." (Alan Turing - Timeline). He looked up to Albert Einstein, basing some of his work off of him. In 1930 while applying for college, Christopher passed away from bovine tuberculosis. "This effected Alan deeply, as well as it effected his passions as he started to immerse himself in biology, mathmatical logic. and quantum mechanics." ( J J O'Connor and E.F.). -
Alan is Accepted at Cambridge
Alan Turing was accepted at Cambridge University sometime in 1931. He becomes an undergraduate there to study mainly mathmatics, "where he stays for 3 years until he graduates successfully in 1934." (Alan Turing - Timeline). -
Alan is Rewarded a PhD
At 23 years old, "he is elected fellow of King's college before he leaves for America to go to Princeton University to study advanced math. He earns a PhD." (B.J. Copeland). -
Government Codes and Cyphers school
"Alan is asked in Sep. 1939 to join Government Codes and cypher's school located in Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire." (Alan Turing - Info.). Here he did many great things, one being he broke the Enigma code, used by the German military for their radio communications. "It was thought by many that he may have shortened the war by two years." (B.J. Copeland). -
Alan Develops the "Bombe"
Named closely after the failed machine "bomba" which was supposed to decipher German radio messages. During the spring of 1940, Alan Turing designed a machine much different from the old one, renaming it "Bombe". "The machine was so sucessful that by 1942 were decoding cryptanalysts 84,000 messages a month." (Jack Copeland). -
Code Breaking
Alan Turing and many others worked with the bombe from 1943 - 1945 when the war finally ends. "He met regularly with elite people in the USA to discuss secret information on the code breaking." (Alan Turing -Timeline). -
Turing's ACE Model
At the end of the war Alan was elected to join the National Physical Laboratory in London to design an electronic computer. The design he came up with (ACE), was dismissed because of the complicated design. Instead, they went with a simpler one, naming it the Pilot ACE. Ironically, they lost the race for the "world’s first working electronic stored-program digital computer." (B.J. Copeland) if instead Alan's original plan been followed through, it would have had more memory and been faster. -
He was a Marathon Runner
Turing was a successful marathon runner and a trained athlete. He loved running and often it took the stress away from his work. He started focusing on running in the early 1940's, and ran for the Amateur Athletic Championships Marathon with an amazing finishing time, (2:46:03) "which was only eleven minutes slower than the winner of the 1948 Olympic games." (Andrew Hodges) -
Artificial Intelligence
Alan Turing had many ideas and questions that formed the basis of cognitive science and artificial intelligence. In 1950 he published a work on "Computing machinery and Intelligence", (B.J. Copeland) which in it is now known as the Turing test. The Turing test was an attempt to define how a machine can be called "intelligent". Following the success of this paper, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1951. -
Turing's Arrest and Death
"In 1952 Turing was arrested in for homosexuality and his security clearence was withdrawn. To avoid jail he agreed to be injected with oestrogen as "treatment"."(Andrew H.).
these hormone therapy sessions took it's toll on his mental health like so many others. He comminted suicide in his home on June 7th, 1954 and was cremated at the Woking crematorium. "It is often wondered how much farther computing would be if he had lived." (Alan Turing - Who Was He?).
