Alan Mathison Turing 1912 1954

1
Alan Mathison Turing (1912 1954)

• British mathematician, logician, and
  cryptographer,
• One of the fathers of modern computer science.

• British mathematician, logician, and
  cryptographer,
• One of the fathers of modern computer science.

2
Some Contributions

• Provided an influential formalization of the
  concept of algorithm and computation the Turing
  machine. Also formulated the Church-Turing
  thesis stating that any practical computing model
  has either the equivalent or a subset of the
  capabilities of a Turing machine.
• During World War II he worked on breaking German
  ciphers, particularly the Enigma machine.

• He designed one of the earliest electronic
  programmable digital computers at the National
  Physical Laboratory.

3
Death

• Prosecution for his homosexuality crippled his
  career. He was charged with gross indecency and
  sexual perversion.
• He unapologetically offered no defense, and was
  convicted.
• He was given a choice between incarceration and
  estrogen hormonal treatment. He chose the latter.
• In 1954, he died of cyanide poisoning. His death
  was ruled a suicide.

4
Recognition

• A statue of Turing was unveiled in Manchester on
  June 23, 2001.
• To mark the 50th anniversary of his untimely
  death, a memorial plaque was unveiled at his
  former residence 'Hollymeade' in Wilmslow on June
  7, 2004.
• The Turing Award is given by the Association for
  Computing Machinery to a person for technical
  contributions to the computing community. It is
  widely considered to be the equivalent of the
  Nobel Prize in the computing world.