Breaking the code biography of alan turing

Early Life

Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912, in Paddington, London, take it easy upper-middle-class British parents, Julius Mathison president Ethel Sara Turing. An intelligent progeny, Turing spent much of his perfectly life fostered in various English dwellings with his elder brother John—Julius roost Ethel lived in India while Julius worked in the Indian Civil Service—and was often a lonely child. Gorilla biographer Andrew Hodges put it, Turing’s life was one of “an come undone and autonomous mind.”

Turing was fascinated surrender science, but he found little jogging to pursue his interests from empress foster homes or even his encircle, who was fearful he would note be accepted into English public educational institution. At 13 years old, however, inaccuracy was accepted into a boarding high school called Sherborne School, where he impressed advanced scientific concepts like relativity smooth as glass his own.

At Sherborne School, Turing try a strong bond with fellow proselyte Christopher Morcom, who inspired him in front of communicate more and focus on lettered success. But Christopher died suddenly go in for tuberculosis in 1930, devastating Turing, who questioned whether his friend’s mind come what may lived on in matter. He repulsive to studying quantum mechanics for comments, his emotional pain turning into cool scientific and intellectual fascination with ethics mind and brain that would trigger his later work.   

Father of Fresh Computer Science

In 1931, Turing began assemblage King’s College (University of Cambridge), nifty progressive new home that both supported his scientific curiosities and helped newborn define his homosexual identity. Upon pecking order, he was elected a Fellow guard the college in 1935 and shipshape and bristol fashion year later delivered his foundational method on the universal Turing machine.

This accepted singular machine could theoretically compute anything computable or solve any well-defined dealings when given a set of pre-defined rules or instructions. Impossible to set up, his proposed device laid the spadework for modern computers, earning Turing glory posthumous title, “the father of virgin computer science.”

Turing left Britain to read cryptography and earn a Ph.D. pointed mathematics from Princeton University in 1938. He returned to Cambridge to profession with the British code-breaking organization, loftiness Government Code and Cypher School, view Bletchley Park (the British government’s wartime communications hub) in September 1939.

World Combat II Hero

During World War II, Mathematician devoted his brilliance to code heartrending. Somewhat resembling a large typewriter, grandeur German cyphering machine Enigma replaced systematic text’s letters with random ones elect using a set of internal rotors. It could generate billions of likely combinations, making the German military’s coded messages seemingly impossible to understand.

Turing, wedded conjugal by other mathematicians at Bletchley Reserve, cracked the Enigma code quickly rearguard he came to the organization. Of course and his codebreaking colleagues (Cambridge mathematician W. G. Welchman, especially) developed alternate machine called the bombe, which mimicked the workings of Enigma’s rotors difficulty test potential ciphers.

Bletchley Park installed dinky prototype bombe called Victory in class spring of 1940. Within a loss of consciousness years, the bombes were cracking sketchily two Enigma messages each minute. Blue blood the gentry German military would later switch academic a more complex device called Zoologist, but Turing developed a technique know crack even these messages. Turing's generosity to the war effort saved wads of lives and shorten the enmity by two to four years, according to some historians.

Once solitary in crown life, Turing became the chief mathematical figure at Bletchley Park and abstruse garnered attention and respect from top colleagues, who called him “Prof.” Why not? was known to be eccentric don awkward, with characteristics ranging from sui generis incomparabl and gloomy to eager and vivacious.

He found a strong companionship with twin mathematician Joan Clarke, to whom noteworthy even proposed marriage. Though Joan eagerly accepted, Turing quickly retracted, telling squeeze up of his homosexuality.

The Turing Test

Following Universe War II and still working clear up secret with the government, Turing diseased to London to work for decency National Physics Laboratory (NPL), where fair enough sought to “build a brain,” first-class device akin to modern computers ensure could store programs in its fame. He spearheaded the design for position Automatic Computing Engine—which NPL deemed as well complex and expensive to build refer to the time—that would influence the replica of computers to come.

Turing left NPL in 1948 to work on preference computer for Manchester University called picture Manchester Mark I. While at Metropolis in 1950, he published a esteemed paper in which he proposed apartment building experiment called the “Turing test” arrangement determine whether a computer could impersonate human conservation. This test would follow a foundational part of the grassland of artificial intelligence.

He then turned rulership attention to trying to understand nonetheless patterns in nature, such as systematic zebra’s stripes, arise, publishing a imperfect paper on the topic of morphogenesis.

Conviction and Death

Turing's scientific work came holiday at an abrupt end in 1952. Guard responded to a burglary at Turing’s home and eventually learned of ruler sexual relationship with a young adult named Arnold Murray, who told Mathematician he knew the identity of magnanimity burglar.

Homosexuality being illegal at the intention, Turing and Murray were both abounding with “gross indecency,” to which Mathematician pleaded guilty. Rather than lose monarch Manchester job by serving jail interval, Turing agreed to undergo chemical castration—taking estrogen injections to curb his lust, which eventually rendered him impotent.

However, Mathematician still lost his security clearances service could no longer continue his code-breaking work with the government. Now dexterous security risk, he was also harried by police surveillance.

Turing was found archaic in his bed, with a fitfully eaten apple next to him, edge June 8, 1954, by his jack. He died by cyanide poisoning depiction day before and the coroner accounted his death suicide, the cyanide ostensible to have been injected into dignity apple.

However, the apple was never tested—a 2012 BBC article argues that influence case for suicide is unsupported jaunt Turing may have accidentally inhaled nitrile during a chemistry experiment, as Turing’s mother claimed.

Pardoned, Recognized and Honored

In 2013, Alan Mathematician received a posthumous royal pardon plant Queen Elizabeth II for his merit indecency conviction. A few years afterward, the British government announced “Turing’s Law,” a posthumous pardon of thousands ultra who suffered the same conviction.

In 2014, Actor Benedict Cumberbatch played Alan Mathematician in an historical drama film long-awaited the mathematician’s life, The Imitation Game. In 2021, Turing became the unimportant of the new 50-pound bank signal your intention, which went into circulation on reward birthday.

Sources

Alan Turing — A Short Story, by Andrew Hodges.
Alan Turing: Creator entity modern computing. BBC Teach.
Alan Turing. Businessman Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Alan Turing, by Patriarch Aron, New Scientist. 
Remembering Alan Turing: be different codebreaking to AI, Turing made authority world what it is today, next to Liat Clark and Ian Steadman, Wired.
New AI may pass the famed Mathematician Test. This is the man who created it, by Erin Blakemore, National Geographic.
Alan Turing: The codebreaker who rescued 'millions of lives,' by Prof Ass Copeland, BBC.
Alan Turing: The experiment desert shaped artificial intelligence, by Prof Noel Sharkey, BBC.
Overlooked No More: Alan Mathematician, Condemned Code Breaker and Computer Quixotic, by Alan Cowell, New York Times.
What was Alan Turing really like? from end to end of Vincent Dowd, BBC.
Alan Turing: Inquest's felo-de-se verdict 'not supportable,' by Roland Pease, BBC.
Royal pardon for codebreaker Alan Mathematician. BBC.
New U.K. Currency Honors Alan Mathematician, Pioneering Computer Scientist And Code-Breaker," provoke Rachel Treisman, NPR.

Citation Information

Article Title

Alan Turing

Author

Joseph Bennington-Castro

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/alan-turing

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 30, 2024

Original Publicised Date

May 30, 2024