Who was Alan Turing?
Alan Mathison Turing was born on the 23rd of June, 1912, in Maida Vale, London. He was the youngest of two brothers, and lived his childhood in Hastings. At 13 he started attending Sherborne School, but due to strikes he had to cycle 60 miles to make his first day. During his time there, he met Christopher Morcom who has been described as his first love. Sadly their time together was short as in 1930 Morcom died from tuberculosis - an event that pushed Turing further into his love of science and math, as well as an interest in how the mind works which would lead to the basic conception of artificial intelligence.
Turing went on to study at King’s College, Cambridge, which he left with a first class honours in mathematics and later a fellowship. Two years after leaving King’s College, Turing published a paper called “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” in which he spoke of a hypothetical machine that could solve any problem to which there was a solution. This machine became known as a universal Turing machine, and through its accessible nature this hypothetical machine became the basis for modern computer science.
Turing went on to study at Princeton University in New Jersey between 1936 and 1938 at the end of which he received a PhD from the establishments Department of Mathematics.
During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park trying to crack German codes including those generated by the Enigma cipher machine. Working off information gathered by the Polish Cipher Bureau, Turing created an electro-mechanical machine called the Bombe which could reliably break the Enigma codes. During his time at Bletchley Park, Turing also helped tackle other encryptions including the German naval Enigma which he solved near single headedly. In 1941, Turing proposed to his friend and colleague Joan Clarke before opening up to her about his homosexuality; while she was happy to go ahead with the engagement he soon called it off.
After the war Turing turned his attention to electronic computers, inspired by the work from his Peers at Bletchley Park who created Colossus, the world's first computer. In 1946 he presented the detailed design of a computer that could store program installations electronically on optically accessible memory. The same year he received an appointment as an Officer in the Order of the British Empire from King George VI.
In 1948, Turing came back to his thoughts of the mind, starting to ask if a computer would ever be able to think for itself. With this in mind, he designed a test to work out if a machine could be called intelligent, known as the Turing Test. The test would see volunteers talking to a computer and a real person through text without knowing which was which, trying to identify the human after 5 minutes. If the computer was guessed as the human over 30% of the time, it would pass the test.
In January, 1952, Turing was arrested for “gross indecency” after admitting to police that he was in a sexual relationship with another man. After pleading guilty to the charges on trial due to his brother's advice, Turing was offered prison or probation - he chose the latter. One of the conditions of his probation was to undergo hormone therapy, and he had to inject himself with synthetic oestrogen to lower his sex drive. His conviction also lead to him loosing his job at the Government Communication Headquarters for fear that his homosexuality could be used to blackmail information from him.
In June, 1954, Turing was found dead by his housekeeper, with a half eaten apple beside him. The cause of his death was determined to be cyanide poisoning, and his death was ruled as a suicide although some think it could have been accidental.
Most of his work from the war was kept a secret for years, his role in cracking the enigma code not coming to light until the 70s, and the full story of his time at Bletchley Park not being told until the 90s. In 2009, after a petition reached over 30,000 signatures, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised for the treatment of Turing over the years. It wasn't until another petition reached over 37,000 signatures and multiple bills were submitted to parliament that Turing received a royal pardon for his conviction from Queen Elizabeth II in 2013, over 60 years after his death.
Alan Turing had one of the smartest minds of his time; it is estimated that he shortened the war by at least two years with his work as a code breaker, and his ideas on computer theory made him the father of modern computing and artificial intelligence. Sadly his country turned its back on him because he was queer, and it’s only in the last couple of decades that his accomplishments are being honoured.
On June, 23rd, 2021 a new £50 note was released featuring a photo of Turing along with the quote “This is only a foretaste of what us t cine, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”
