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Just a reminder that this year is The Alan Turing Year. Turing was born in London on the 23th June 1912. There is just about no area of science that Turing has not had some impact on in some way. I think he is best known for his pioneering works in computer science. |
In a wider context Turing is famous for his code breaking work during the second word war at Bletchley Park. After the war he worked at the National Physics Laboratory creating the designs for ACE, which was a very early electronic stored-program computer.
In 1948 Turing joined the Computing Laboratory at Manchester.
Turing’s story after that is quite sad. He was prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952, he was given a chemical castration after that. He died of cyanide poisoning on 1954. The verdict of the inquiry was suicide.
You can find out lots more about Turing’s influence on mathematics and science at the official The Alan Turing 2012 homepage.
Other Links
Andrew Hodges’s page