Scientists / Mathematics
アラン・チューリング
GB 1912-06-23 ~ 1954-06-07
Twentieth-century British mathematician and cryptanalyst
Formalized computation with the Turing machine and helped crack the Enigma code
Father of computer science and pioneer of artificial intelligence theory
British mathematician born in 1912 who formalized computation with the Turing machine and helped crack the Enigma code. Called the father of computer science, he also pioneered artificial intelligence theory.
What You Can Learn
Turing's theoretical framework underpins every computer and every algorithm running today. The Turing Test remains the benchmark in AI debates about machine intelligence. His story also highlights the cost of institutional prejudice: a mind that helped win a war was destroyed by discriminatory law, a cautionary tale for any organization that fails to value diversity. His story also highlights the cost of institutional prejudice: a mind that helped win a war was destroyed by discriminatory law, a cautionary tale for any organization that fails to embrace inclusion.
Words That Resonate
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.
A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.
Life & Legacy
Alan Turing laid the theoretical foundations of computer science and played a decisive role in Allied cryptanalysis during World War II. His concept of the Turing machine defined the limits of computation, and his wartime codebreaking shortened the conflict. His later work on machine intelligence opened the field of artificial intelligence.
Born in 1912 in London, Turing showed early mathematical talent. At Cambridge he studied under Max Newman and in 1936 published "On Computable Numbers," which introduced the Turing machine, an abstract device that formalizes the concept of an algorithm. The paper proved that some problems are fundamentally undecidable.
During World War II he worked at Bletchley Park, where he led the effort to break the German Enigma cipher. He designed the Bombe, an electromechanical device that dramatically accelerated decryption. Historians estimate that the intelligence gained shortened the war by up to two years.
After the war he joined the National Physical Laboratory and then Manchester University, contributing to the design of early stored-program computers. In 1950 he published "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," proposing what is now called the Turing Test: a machine should be considered intelligent if its responses are indistinguishable from a human's.
Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexuality, then a criminal offense in Britain. He accepted chemical castration and died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning, ruled a suicide. In 2013 he received a posthumous royal pardon, and in 2021 his portrait appeared on the fifty-pound note.
His legacy spans theoretical computer science, practical engineering, cryptography, and the philosophy of mind.
Expert Perspective
Among scientists, Turing is the father of computer science. The Turing machine defined computability; the Turing Test framed the AI question. His wartime codebreaking demonstrated the practical power of theoretical mathematics. His tragic persecution has made him a symbol of the human cost of intolerance in science.