Contents
Alan Turing
Helping break Enigma and laying foundations for computer science.
Bletchley Park · Turing machine
- Born
- 23 June 1912
- Birthplace
- London, England
- Died
- 7 June 1954
More people
Alan Turing
An English mathematician whose work connected abstract computation, wartime codebreaking and questions about machine intelligence.
Early life
Southern England
Grew up in England and attended Sherborne School.
University studies
Studied at Cambridge and earned a doctorate at Princeton.
Career
- 1939
Wartime codebreaking
Joined Bletchley Park’s work on German ciphers.
- 1945
Computer design
Worked on the Automatic Computing Engine at the National Physical Laboratory.
- 1948
Manchester research
Joined work on early computers at Manchester.
Contributions
Computable numbers
Described an abstract machine for carrying out algorithms.
Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Proposed an imitation game for examining machine intelligence.
Morphogenesis
Explored how chemical processes could generate biological patterns.
Beyond work
Running
Was a committed long-distance runner.
Persecution
Was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts and subjected to hormone treatment.
Sources & photo credit
Biographical reference ↗Alan Turing Institute: the 1936 breakthrough ↗Photo: Elliott & Fry. Public domain · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
