-
Birth
Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in London, England. He grew up in southern England and eventually graduated from Cambridge with a degree in Mathematics. -
Birth to Death
Alan Turing lived from June 23, 1912 to June 7, 1954; dying at the age of 41. -
Sherborne School
From 1926 to 1931 Turing attended school at Sherborne, Turing read Albert Einstein's work and was able to deduce Einstein's criticism of Newton's Laws of Motion, which was impressive because of the lack of any explicit mention of it. At Sherborne, Turing also became friends with Christopher Morcom who tragically died two year later and left Turing scarred (as Morcom was believed to be Turing's "first love"). -
Cambridge
Turing studied at Cambridge as an undergraduate from 1931 to 1934 and received first-class honors in mathematics. -
Central Limit Theorem
In 1935, after completing his undergraduate degree, Turing was elected a fellow at Cambridge for his dissertation on proving the central limit theorem. -
Conceptualization of Turing Machines
In 1936 Turing published "On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungs problem," which reformed the arithmetic language of Kurt Godel's limits of computation for hypothetical devices that were later coined "Turing Machines." In this paper, Turing proved that his "universal computing machine" could complete any mathematical computation if represented as an algorithm. This paper was later called the most influential math paper in history. -
ACE Design
From 1945 to 1947, Alan Turing worked on his design for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) at the National Physical Laboratory. -
Stored-Program Computer
On February 19, 1946 Turing presented the first detailed design of a stored-program computer. -
Intelligent Machinery
In 1947, Turing Returned to Cambridge and wrote "Intelligent Machinery" which was not published while he was alive. -
Turing Test
Alan Turing created the Turing Test, which he initially referred to as the "imitation game", in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." Its purpose is to test a computer's ability to demonstrate intelligence behavior at the same level or higher than humans. -
ACE First Run
In 1950, the pilot ACE executed it's first program, and began the history of the modern computer. The pilot ACE was unfortunately built at Bletchley park while Turing was on sabbatical at Cambridge. -
Prosecution
In 1952 Alan Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts and accepted chemical castration through DES hormone treatment instead of receiving prison time. -
The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis
In 1952, "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" became a book and was published by Turing researching the biological world of organisms. -
Death
Alan Turing Died on June 7, 1954 from Cyanide poisoning. Some believe that repeated expose in trace quantities of Cyanide on Turing's fingers or food caused his death while others believed it to be a suicide. Turing was previously sentenced to legal punishment in the form of forced medication for homosexuality. This medication was drastically impacting his mental health leading to deep depression before being found dead on June 8th, 1954 with a half eaten apple by his side. -
Turing Pattern formula
In 1955, biologists and mathematicians Kondo and Asai noticed Turing patterns in the Pomacanthus fish, and conducted research to record and compare the patterns of the fish to the output patterns of Turing's reaction-diffusion system formula [ ut=dΔu+f(γ,u) ]. This formula comes from Turing's 1952 paper, "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis", and gives mathematical systems to compare the structural similarities between the patterns of sound frequencies and patterns in nature. -
-
Alan Turing Law
In 2017, British law retroactively pardoned men convicted of homosexual acts under past legislation, and became informally known as the Alan Turing law.
