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Looking At Turing 138

Posted by Hemos from the down-memory-lane dept.
Jim Jones has written in with the first of a series that explores the history of Mr. Alan Turing, and his connection with digital computing.
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Looking At Turing More

Looking At Turing

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  • The best book ever written about Alan and how he saved the world. This is a true hero that most people don't know about. Sad very sad.

  • Good History (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sleeperservice ( 62645 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:06PM (#2689114)
    Nice article - and I'll look forward to the next installment.

    Here's a question, though - Do we still live in an age where we can postulate these types of ideas and questions, or do we demand hard-core applications to come directly from speculative science?

    I've wondered about that for a number of years now.
    • Yes, currently there is still quite a bit of "pure science" being done. Number theory for example is something that is done mainly to be done. Only great advances will be useful, and even then almost only in cryptography.

    • Re:Good History (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Strange_Attractor ( 160407 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:30PM (#2689258) Homepage
      This sort of freewheeling speculation is still (and always will be) possible - at least to bright young people who can't be browbeated, bribed, or otherwise made to respect received wisdom that strikes them as wrong. A few current examples - Linux coders, Stephen Hawking, K. Eric Drexler. Entrenched, and "self-evidently true" beliefs insisted nothing concrete (or interesting or possible) would come of their work - which added to their inspiration.

      Certainty that that era is over has probably a big part of the "give up" status-quo indoctrination (I do not mean to attack you, but I think it's food for thought).

    • Re:Good History (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Debillitatus ( 532722 )
      Here's a question, though - Do we still live in an age where we can postulate these types of ideas and questions, or do we demand hard-core applications to come directly from speculative science?

      Well, I guess for a good answer to that question, you need to know who the "we" are. I think that most people in the country as a whole are interested in science inasmuch as it can produce applications, and, in particular, applications which will affect their everyday life. For example, IMHO most people wouldn't consider what NASA does as "applied", since they don't see how they would benefit from it directly.

      On the other hand, there is a large class of people who care about asking questions in a pure sense, and answering them without a lot of thought given to their applications. These people are the academics. For example, with few exceptions, academics fall into these this category. As a professor of (say) mathematics, one is rarely interested in commercial applications of the math one is doing, and depending on the field, not interested in whether the mathematics applies to anything at all. This is true of most academic fields. Historians ask those questions because they're the right questions to ask, not because it'll build a better motherboard.

  • Not very detailed (Score:2, Informative)

    by gorilla ( 36491 )
    It would be useful if they went into more details, eg what a turning machine is [stanford.edu].

  • Alan Turing (Score:5, Informative)

    by serpent0r ( 540055 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:10PM (#2689148) Homepage
    I must say, Alan Turing is my favorite computer scientist, however I don't believe he get's the recommendation that he deserves. They just created a memorial for him, and the site states that they could not find funding from not even one major corporation. They had to rely on donations from the public. Here is the site. Alan Turing Memorial Site [btinternet.com] -Matt

    • Re:Alan Turing (Score:3, Informative)

      by ChazeFroy ( 51595 )
      I think just about every school with a Computer Science program has a machine named "turing". It's kind of like naming schools after famous people, but in a geeky way :-)
      • Yeah, I will agree. And I've noticed that often, right next to Turing, physically, is a machine named Hoare. I always found that a little funny. Almost as if the guys who set them up were trying to say "Turing was a manwhore!".

        Then again, maybe it's just me.
        • I think just about every school with a Computer Science program has a machine named "turing". It's kind of like naming schools after famous people, but in a geeky way :-)

        It could be they are naming it after the famous Computer Scientist, or it could be a joke on the Turing Machine [everything2.com]. You know, like so they can say "and this, is the Turing Machine".

        Kind of like how ILM used to have a computer named Dagobah.... "and this, is the Dagobah System".

    • Re:Alan Turing (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ctid ( 449118 )
      To anyone visiting Manchester in the North West of England, I'd recommend visiting the Turing Memorial. It's good to go in the evening, because in the dark the statue is very lifelike. I do an evening class in the building behind the statue (see photo [btinternet.com]) and even I jump sometimes when I cross the park on my way back, even though I've walked past the statue only two hours before!

  • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

    by itwerx ( 165526 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:16PM (#2689178) Homepage
    ...with the recent release of LOTR, Alan Turing has been found to be the originator of DNS and somewhat megalomaniac, as evidenced by this inscription:

    One Rule Turing them all
    One Find Turing them,
    One Bring Turing them all
    And in the darkness BIND them

    (Who knew Tolkien was secretly dyslexic?)

    Score=Funny - Right on!
    Score=Offtopic - Oh yeah? Let's see you post something better! :)

  • Alan Turing home page (Score:3, Informative)

    by devphil ( 51341 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:16PM (#2689180) Homepage


    ... is here [turing.org.uk]. I can't get to the site referenced in the article, so maybe they already mention it or link to it.

  • What a teaser! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Exmet Paff Daxx ( 535601 )
    Next month, we will explore the workings of a Turing Machine and follow Alan into the war effort. We will see how a single man's true genius can turn the tide of war, and we will shake our heads in disbelief at a hero's humiliation and eventual death. Stay tuned.

    It's kind of sad that Slashdot linked to the first part of this series rather than waiting for it to finish. The true depth of Turing's story lies in what happened during the war. If you've never read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon [cryptonomicon.com], now is an excellent time to start; Stephenson's fictional Turing is an excellent read.

    Many who have studied Turing's life believe that this book [turing.org.uk] by Hodges is the definitive work of a man who was arguably a casualty of his lifestyle. Turing's answers to the three Great Questions of Mathematics - Completeness - Is Mathematics complete? Could every question be proven or disproven? Consistency - Does Mathematics always give the same answer? - and Decidability - did a chain of logic exist to prove or disprove any assertion - well, all of these were overshadowed by the fact that as a homosexual he defied God's Will - but all in all his contributions to Mathematics are staggering.

    The lasting pervasiveness of this man's work - (who doesn't know what a "Turing Test" is?) - is a living testament to his genius. It's funny that on the same day we discuss the Nobel Prize we discuss the man most obviously deprived of it.
    • Turing only answered the deciability question-- the other two were already answered.
    • well, all of these were overshadowed by the fact that as a homosexual he defied God's Will
      Even if this were true of any God, so what?

    • Re:What a teaser! (Score:5, Funny)

      by sylvester ( 98418 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:29PM (#2689251) Homepage
      > who doesn't know what a "Turing Test" is?

      I'm sorry, I don't what you mean by "Turing Test". Perhaps we can talk about something else for a while.

      :-)
    • Except most would decribe him as either a mathematician or computer scientist and the Nobel Prizes are awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economics, Literature and Peace.

    • It's kind of sad that Slashdot linked to the first part of this series rather than waiting for it to finish.

      If they did that, there would be bunches of messages chastizing the linker for linking to old news.

      Many who have studied Turing's life believe that this book [turing.org.uk] by Hodges is the definitive work of a man who was arguably a casualty of his lifestyle.

      I haven't seen any mention of the fact that there was a play based on this book. I know it ran in London because I saw it there. I think it also ran on Broadway.

      • I haven't seen any mention of the fact that there was a play based on this book. I know it ran in London because I saw it there. I think it also ran on Broadway.

        Something tells me that was the basis for the made-for-tv film Breaking the Code. More about Turing as a person, rather than a techie history.

        Interesting film.

        ...laura

  • The classic five-star book on Turing (Score:4, Informative)

    by SimHacker ( 180785 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:27PM (#2689234) Homepage Journal
    Alan Turing: The Enigma [amazon.com] is the classic and most excellent biography of Alan Turing, that was recently re-issued.

    Check out the great review on Amazon [amazon.com] by Fidonet founder and homo-anarchist Tom Jennings [wps.com]!

    -Don

    • Re:The classic five-star book on Turing (Score:4, Informative)

      by SimHacker ( 180785 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @05:08PM (#2689519) Homepage Journal
      Here is the Amazon review by Tom Jennings [wps.com] of the classic book Alan Turing: The Enigma [amazon.com].

      Much more information about Alan Turing and the book is on the web page created by Turing's biographer, Andrew Hodges: The Alan Turing Home Page [turing.org.uk].

      From the Amazon review [amazon.com]:

      18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
      [Five Stars]
      February 17, 2001

      One of the most important books I've ever read. Without this book, the real Alan Turing might fade into obscurity or at least the easy caricature of an eccentric British mathematician. And to the relief of many, because Turing was a difficult person: an unapologetic homosexual in post-victorian england; ground-breaking mathematician; utterly indifferent to social conventions; arrogantly original (working from first principles, ignoring precedents); with no respect for professional boundaries (a 'pure' mathematician who taught himself engineering and electronics).

      His best-known work is his 1936 'Computable Numbers' paper, defining a self-modifying, stored-program machine. He used these ideas to help build code-breaking methods and machinery at Bletchley Park, England's WWII electronic intelligence center. This work, much still classified today, led directly to the construction of the world's first stored-program, self-modifying computer, in 1948.

      Computers were always symbol-manipulators, to Alan, not 'number crunchers', the predominant view even to von Neumann, and into the 60's and 70's. He designed many basic software concepts (interpreter, floating point), most of which were ignored (he wasn't exactly good at promoting his ideas). By 1948 Alan had moved on to studying human and machine intelligence, as a user of computers, again with his lack of social niceties and radical thinking, some of his ideas were baffling or embarrassing until 'rediscovered' decades later as brilliant insights into intelligence. His 'Turing test' of intelligence dates from this period, and is still widely misunderstood.

      Poor Alan; his refusal to deceive himself or others and "go along" with the conventions of the time regarding sexuality caused him (and other homosexuals then) great problems; early Cold War England was not a good time to be gay, or a misfit, especially one with deep knowledge of war-time secrecy (he was technical crypto liason to the U.S., and one of the few with broad knowledge of operations at Bletchley, since he defined so much of it, in a time of extreme compartmentalization). His sexual escapades eventually got him in trouble, and his increasing isolation and the fact that he simply couldn't acknowledge some of his life's work due to secrecy, probably influenced his suicide at the age of 42.

      I first discovered Turing-the-person in A HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE 20TH CENTURY (Metropolis, Howlett, Gian-Carlo Rota; Acedemic Press, 1980), where I.J. Good wrote, "we didn't know he was a homosexual until after the war... if the security people had found out [and removed him]... we might have lost the war". This led me to look for books on Turing, and then the Hodges book magically appeared on the shelf.

      I am grateful that Hodges researched his life as well as his work, as far as the data allows. Knowing the whole is always important, but I think critical in Alan Turing's life. Clearly, I rate this one of the most important books I've ever read.

      -Tom Jennings [wps.com]

    • interestingly enough, there is also a play and a movie called breaking the code [turing.org.uk], about the life of alan turing. the author of the book you mention had a hand in its creation.

      the role of turing was played by derek jacobi [openhere.com], famous for his title role in i, claudius. the movie made for the bbc is also available on tape [amazon.com].
  • Surely Doctor Alan Turing.

    He did his PhD at Princeton

  • hmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by Docrates ( 148350 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:44PM (#2689335) Homepage

    Warning: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (111) in /home/sites/site53/users/systool/stbwebsite/inc/da tabase.inc on line 17
    Secret code error number 83: localhost, bfadmin.

    Yes, that Turing sure was a complicated fellow...
  • Haha! I wasn't able to read the article, but due to their poor programming, I NOW KNOW THEIR SECRET CODE:
    "error number 83: localhost, bfadmin"
  • Is he the first national Recognized gay scientist? there should be an award to recognize gay scientist. GLAD should sponsor the Memorial. the end.
  • Slashdotted. Here's the article: Alan Turing - Towards a Digital Mind: Part 1 G.James Jones Tuesday December 11, 2001 09:30 AM Join G. James Jones as he takes us on another trip in the way-back machine with part 1 of his series on math master Alan Turing. A Pioneer for a New Century Last time, we took a look at the life and some of the achievements, and near achievements, of Charles Babbage, the Godfather of Computing. Babbage made great leaps in our understanding of what would become the field of computer science by considering, and then demonstrating, that mathematical processes could be carried out quickly, repeatedly and without error through mechanical means. This was such a simple idea, but it was ground breaking in its implications. Babbage had been frustrated by the errors that crept into the lookup tables that serious mathematicians used for their calculations. His drive to create calculating machines grew out of the desire to remove these errors from the process of creating those tables. Babbage was ahead of his time. He was a pioneer of the 19th century. If his work hadn't been rediscovered, his achievements have been almost entirely forgotten by the time the idea of automatic calculations through machines began to take hold in the 20th century. One of the proponents of such automatic, mechanical, calculations was a mathematician in King's College, Cambridge; a young Alan Turing. It's almost a natural progression for this series to move from the cog wheel brains of Mr. Babbage to the theoretical thought machines of Alan Turing. Out of the necessity to answer one of the most critical mathematical questions of his time, Turing started down the road of what would become the fields of modern computer science and cryptography. As one of the single men whose achievements helped turn the tide of World War II, he is a hero. As developer of some of the original ideas about digital computers and for helping solve Hilbert's final question of Mathematics, he is a genius. Being human, his life is ultimately marked by complexity and, unfortunately... tragedy. This article will focus on Alan Turing's life leading up to, and including, his invention of the "Turing Machine." Next month, we will tackle his achievements in cryptography during World War II, his ideas on the digital computer, and the controversial events that led to this hero's, one of my heros, tragic death. Early Signs of a Remarkable Mind Alan Mathison Turing was born to Julius Mathison Turing, an Indian Civil Service officer, and Ethel Stoney on June 23, 1912 in Paddington, England. Alan's father was still under active commission in India and feared the risks of raising family in the remote provinces over which he held jurisdiction. After Alan's birth, his father decided to leave his family in England instead of risking those uncertainties, choosing instead to make the trip back and forth between India and England while leaving his family with friends in England. Like Babbage (and many others in this field), Turing showed early signs of, what I like to call, the "personality disorder" that leads to a such vocations as engineering and mathematics. Alan's natural inquisitiveness was often confused with mischief, where "planting" broken toys in hopes of resurrecting them was probably interpreted as "getting rid of the evidence." At a very early age, he is said to have taught himself to read in only three weeks and his discovery of numbers brought about the distracting habit of stopping at every street light in order to find its serial number. At the age of seven, while on a picnic in Ullapool, Scotland, Alan had the idea of gathering wild honey for the afternoon's tea. By plotting the flight paths of the bees among the heather, he was able to find the intersection point that marked their hive and provide an unexpected treat for the family. There's another anecdote that made an appearance in Neal Stephenson's spectacular work of fiction, The Cryptonomicon, in which Turing plays a supporting role. It seems that Alan had a bicycle that had a problem with its chain. He discovered that the chain would dislodge itself from the gears after a regular, repeatable, number of revolutions. At first, the young Alan would count the revolutions of the gears throughout his ride until it was time for the chain to be forced to derail. He would then get off his bike and re-adjust the chain. As this got to be cumbersome over longer treks, he finally rigged a mechanical device that would maintain the count and readjust the chain itself. Supposedly, it never occurred to him to just buy a new chain to solve the problem. I believe that it is more likely that the chain's issues presented a unique problem set for Turing's mind to solve. It challenged him to think in a different way. It was challenging and fun; buying a chain was not. Getting an Education At the age of six, Alan's mother enrolled him in a private day school, St. Michael's, in order for him to learn Latin. Thus began Alan's introduction into the system that would shape his intellectual and personal development for the next fourteen odd years. The English educational system would prove to be both a conflict and a collaboration with Turing's sensibilities. The collaboration is epitomized by his early respect for rules and their relationship to his concept of fairness. These ideas are probably best illustrated by an anecdote of his mother skipping part of The Pilgrim's Progress. Judging one section to be too theologically weighty for the youngster, she had skipped it while reading aloud in order to spare him. Alan objected and felt that the story was ruined; skipping parts, in his sensibility, was against the rules of reading. The conflict, in his relationship with the English school system, was partially rooted in Alan's resolve that he was nearly always right. Personal opinions were held as closely as fact. He was one of those people that knows something and doesn't think, feel or have an opinion on them. This type of mind set was definitely at odds with an education system built on tradition and firm in the belief that it knew what was best for its charges. Early on, Alan was marked with the label of "genius" by the Headmistress of St. Michael's, a proclamation that would be echoed a few years later by a gypsy fortune teller. Despite such proclamations, Alan was required to follow the natural order of the English school system and, upon finishing his studies at St. Michael's, followed his brother's path to his next school, Hazelhurst and then to his first public school, Marlborough. Public school showed the ugly side of the English school system and Alan had his first troubles with bullies, proclaiming that he learned to run fast in order to "avoid the ball." Brushes with Science Alan was introduced to science through Edwin Tenney Brewster's Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know. Brewster's book sought to introduce topics that help children understand their place in the world and what they had in common and how they differed with and from other living things. This discovery, and that of mathematics, would sustain Turing in a life-long love affair. The rules and discoveries of science and mathematics fit his general sensibilities of the world; it had order and could be explored with reason. Sense could be made of life if observed in the correct way. Brewster's book was probably is the first to link the concept of machine and biology in Alan's mind, explaining that the human body was a complex machine with complicated processes that carried out the duties and chores of maintaining life. While school offered many torments, it also opened up a world of knowledge to the young Turing. He showed an early interest and ability in languages, especially French, and treated it as a code that would allow him to carry on covert communications. Also, having always had a fascination with various process oriented activities, Alan was exposed to chemistry for the first time and fell instantly in love. Turing would go on to dabble in chemistry for the rest of his life, often co-opting family basements and guest rooms as chemistry labs. His habit of concocting various chemical solutions would later play a part in his untimely death as a adult. Sherborne At the age of 13, Alan was enrolled to attend the Sherborne boarding school. At the time of the school's summer term of 1926, England had just been brought to a stand still by the first day of the general strike. No buses or trains were running. Turing made something of a stir, being reported in the local newspaper, by bicycling the sixty miles from his home in Southampton to Sherborne, staying overnight in an Inn at a halfway point. Sherborne and Alan were not the best match. Sherborne, as many English schools of the time, was concerned with creating citizens and not scholars. The headmaster, at the time of Alan's enrollment, espoused the idea that school was originally created to be a miniature society. Students would learn to navigate the complexities of their later adult lives by learning to survive the power plays of their current public school life. Authority and obedience held more sway than the "free exchange of ideas" and the "opening of the mind." Not long after arriving, the already shy Turing became even more withdrawn. Alan sought solace in his books and course work. In 1927, he was able to find the infinite series of the "inverse tangent function" from the trigonometric formula for tan1/2x (tan-1x = x - x3/3 + x5/5 - x7/7 ...) without the aid of elementary calculus (Alan had yet to be exposed to it). It was a significant enough achievement to have his mathematics instructor include himself among the roster of people that had proclaimed the boy's genius. Such a proclamation didn't hold much sway with the school. While the accomplishment was extraordinary, Sherborne's headmaster, not a particular fan of science, felt he was wasting his time and was in danger of becoming a scientific specialist and not an educated man. This disrespect of science was not uncommon at the school. Alan's autumn form-master, a classicist who was enthralled with Latin, called scientific subjects "low cunning" and felt that the only reasons that the Germans lost World War I was because they placed to much faith in science and engineering and not enough in religious thought and observance. Alan's dogged persistence to study such low subjects, finally earned him some respite. As long as he made a few concessions to the formalities of the school, he was left to his own devices. In 1928, he became enthralled with the theory of relativity and lost himself in the English translation of Einstein's Relativity: The Special and General Theory. Probably one of only a few, if any, sixteen year olds who actually grasped Einstein's theories, Turing was able to fully grasp Einstein's doubts of the veracity of Galilei-Newtonian laws. He was even able to deduce Einstein's Law of Motion ("the separation between any two events in the history of a particle shall be a maximum or minimum when measured along its world line") from his readings alone (it wasn't specifically stated in the text). By 1929, Alan had begun to study quantum physics. It was a heady time as Shrodinger and others turned what was considered a "dead" science on its head. Schrodinger's quantum theory of matter was only three years old and Alan and his friend Christopher Morcum immersed themselves in these emerging discoveries. Alan was in his element. King's College Turing had originally planned on attending Trinity College at Cambridge. As far as he was concerned, it was the center of scientific and mathematical thought in England and he wanted to attend. After a number of failed attempts at passing his final examinations, more out of abstinence in engaging his "classical" work, he finally missed a scholarship to Trinity but was able to obtain one to King's, the college of his second choice. King's College agreed with Alan. Though he was still somewhat of a social misfit, his studies and the freedom from the petty tortures of public school life allowed him to relax and find his rhythm. King's also turned out to be a good fit due to the caliber of its faculty. Turing's mathematics professor was one of the most distinguished mathematicians of his time, G.H. Hardy, who had recently left Oxford to take up the Sadleirian Chair at Cambridge. He was also among 85 other students engaged in scientific study, as compared to the one or two he had to seek out during his Sherborne days. As happens today with many high school geeks, college offered a chance for Alan to emerge from his protective shell and begin to engage the world on his own terms. During the 20's, Cambridge had moved to establish itself as second in the world in the field of new maths. It had been able to stake this claim on the developments that its faculty and students were making in the realms of quantum theory and pure mathematics. It was widely regarded as second only to Gottingen University in Germany, a place that supported such genius as John Von Nuemann. Von Nuemann and Turing were to cross paths a number of times throughout their lives. In 1932, Turing read Von Nuemann's Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantemechanik and was deeply affected by the text. His interest in quantum theory continued into the studying of the works of other luminaries like Schrodinger and Heisenberg. This exposure to the greats in an emerging field totally engaged the young Turing and set him to exploring the questions that their discoveries raised. It was this exposure and new found focus that put Turing on an crash course with Hilbert's Three Questions of Mathematics. A Question of Mathematics and Turing Machines In 1928, developments in pure mathematics seemed to be unraveling the foundations of the field. It seemed that the world was on the cusp of unlocking the vary foundations of mathematics. It wouldn't be long before core axioms were nailed down and mathematics would be just a set of easily applied rules that would lead directly, inevitably to the solution of any problem. No problem would be beyond the reach of mathematics. Appropriately applied, mathematics would make the world a better place (sounds kind of like the commotion surrounding the Internet, doesn't it?). It was during this period, in 1928, that Hilbert, already famous for his development of Hilbert quantum spaces, posed a number of questions about the core of mathematics, whose unexpected answers would shake the field and push it into new realms of discovery and reason. Hilbert's agenda was to find a general algorithmic procedure for answering all mathematical inquiries, or at least proving that such a procedure existed. Three of those questions at the heart of his agenda were: Was mathematics complete? Meaning, could every assertion be proven or disproven with the rules of math? Was mathematics consistent? Meaning, could a false statement never be proven true with the rules of math? Was mathematics decidable? Meaning, were there definite steps that would prove or disprove an assertion? While nobody, including Hilbert, had been able to offer solutions to these questions by proof in 1928, Hilbert was confident that the answer to each was yes. In his mind, there had to be a solution for every problem, if only to prove that it was unsolvable. This failed assertion, as bad as it sounds, would actually save mathematicians a lot of effort spent pursuing blind alleys. So, it was still a solution; its a math thing. The issue lay in proving that mathematics was complete, consistent, and decidable. At the same gathering, the young mathematician Kurt Godel dealt a serious blow to this line of queries, by showing that math must be incomplete because, as he showed, there are assertions that can be stated that can be neither proved nor disproved. An assertion, encoded in the form of mathematics, that said, in effect, "this statement is unprovable" showed this disturbing (if you are into that sort of thing) property. An attempt to prove it true or untrue leads to contradiction. At least in the form of the question phrased by Hilbert, Godel had proved that arithmetic was incomplete. There are nuances to this, of course, but it was still damaging. Godel also showed that mathematics could not be proven consistent and complete. However, he was not able to shake loose an answer to Hilbert's question as to the decidability of arithmetic. Alan's professor Hardy, for one, was happy that Godel couldn't topple Hilbert's final question. In his view, a mechanical process that could perform a solution to all mathematical problems would put every serious mathematician out of a job. Everything would have been done. It was time for the student to instruct the teacher, at least in part. After a day of running, an activity that Alan found to nicely clear the mind, he stumbled onto the idea of a machine of simple, though improbable, design that could tackle any sort of problem put to it. The powerful machine would only understand the digits 0 and 1; the first binary computer. It would move a read/write mechanism across an infinite tape of these numbers and, based on their particular arrangement, solve various types of problems. Alan's breakthrough was that he had defined, in specific language, what a general algorithm actually was. The Turing Machine, as his construct would be called, was a thought experiment that helped codify the features of algorithms. During his exploration of the wonderful ideas that this machine inspired, Turing found that, despite the simple, general, nature of his algorithm, there did exist problems that it could not solve. This discovery proved Hilbert's assertions were incorrect, the answer to Hilbert's final question, the Entscheidungsproblem was "no, mathematics is not decidable." The young mathematician from King's College, Cambridge had bested one of the greatest mathematicians of his time at the age of 23. He gained a fair measure of acclaim for his achievement and the word "genius" began to be tossed around again. Had he done only this, he would be remembered in some history books and higher math students would get acquainted with him at some point. At any rate, a small amount of historical immortality, as obscure as it may be, would be granted in his memory. However, it was what he did next that changed the course of human history. Next month, we will explore the workings of a Turing Machine and follow Alan into the war effort. We will see how a single man's true genius can turn the tide of war, and we will shake our heads in disbelief at a hero's humiliation and eventual death. Stay tuned. ------ © 2001 G. James Jones is a Microcomputer Network Analyst for a mid-sized public university in the midwest. He writes on topics ranging from Open Source Software to privacy to the history of technology and its social ramifications. This article originally appeared at System Toolbox (http://www.systemtoolbox.com). Please email me and let me know where it is being used. This article is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Clinton Fuelling. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium if this notice is preserved.

  • What if he passed the test? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is the book really about Alan Turing or about a computer so advanced as to be indistinguishable from Alan Turing?

  • King's College - Turing's College (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MikeCamel ( 6264 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @05:44PM (#2689782) Homepage
    I went to King's College Cambridge, where Turing has the computer room named after him, and where, like one of the college's other famous sons, Rupert Brooke, he is certainly remembered, and respected. Cryptonomicon and Turing: The Enigma are both excellent reads, but we should remember the three places where his name really should live on: first, the Turing Test (for AI), second, in the Turing Machine, and third, in the the Church-Turing hypothesis.

    Alan wasn't the first scientist to be gay - though he was one of the first high-profile scientists to die at least partly as the result of his sexuality. I'm not sure whether he would have made a good poster child (as our US cousins would put it), but he was a fascinating person, and a great one. He was certainly one of the founders of our community - I wonder how he would feel about it now?

  • turing memorial (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PlanetJIM ( 212710 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @06:29PM (#2690042) Homepage
    I was wondering if anybody else here thought the statue at the Turing Memorial [btinternet.com] in Manchester is just a little bit morbid? Honestly, I was offended at first and the statue made me think more deeply about the many populations that owe Turing a debt of gratitude, but still... Maybe looking at the apple was just a little bit too much for me. Couldn't he have had a book TOO?

  • The Enigma -- actual best book about Turing (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you want a really in-depth book about the actual Turing, read this excellent biography (don't me wrong, Cryptonomicon is an excellent work of fiction, and seems to grab his personality well, but this is the official biography).

    here's a link:

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080277580 2/ qid=1008114570/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_3_1/103-5159092-785 0258

  • Another recommended book (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Engines of Logic" by Martin Davis. Covers Turing and a host of others who contributed to the digital computer. Strong mathematical bent.

  • Turing Unfortunate End (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unfortunately Alan Turing suffered at the hands of the US government. His house was ransacked by a theif, he was also living with a man at the time. Police questioned Turing and Turing admitted to his homosexuality. At the time being a homosexual was illegal and Turing was forced into chemical treatments for his homosexuality (hormone treatment). After the humilation he recieved from the US government, whom he helped during WWII w/ his cipher "bombs" (mathematical devices that ticked) Alan Turing took his own life by eating a cynanide ladden apple.
    • How that got modded up as 'Informative' is beyond me. really it is, as it's wrong!

      I think you'll find it was the UK government, and NOT the US government, who hounded Turing for his homosexuality.
  • I was recently asked to provide a chapter for this forthcoming book from Kluwer Academic Publishers in the Netherlands, edited by Robert Epstein and Grace Peters... Looking at the book proposal, I can see it's going to be THE Turing Test Source Book! It's subtitled: "Philospohical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer."

    It will include contributions from Andrew Hodges, Jon Agar, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Dennett, Stevan Harnad, Kenneth Ford, Douglas Hofstader, John R. Lucas, Marvin Minsky, Roger Penrose, David Rumelhart, Selmer Bringsjord, Ned Block, David Chalmers, The Churchlands, Andy Clark, H. M. Collins, JAck Copeland, Hubert Dreyfus, Jerry Fodor, Robert M. French, Thomas Metzinger, Peter Millican, James Moor, Ariella V. Popple, Zenon Pylyshyn, John Searle, Hugh Loebner, Stuart Shieber, Richard Wallace, Joseph Weizenbaum, Rodney Brooks, Peter Dayan, Brue Edmonds, Anne Foerst, David Harel, Patrick J. Hayes, Mark Humphrys, Douglas Lenat, John McCarthy, Jon Oberlander, Ian Pratt, Willaim J. Rapaport, Murray Shanahan, Aron Sloman, Chris Thornton, Stuart Watt, Blay Whitby, Terry Winograd, Robbie Garner, Jason Hutchens,David Levy, Joseph Weintraub, Thomas Whalen, Veronique Bastin & Dennis Cordier, Kevin L. Copple, Bruce Cooper, Thad Crew, Richard Gibbons, Gerold Lee Gorman, David Hamill, Sandy Johnson & Chris Johnson, Chris S. Johnson, Laurence Matishak, Michael L. Maudin, Peter Neuendorffer, Michale Onofrio & Stephen Hildebran, Luke Pellen, Joseph Strout, Ed T. Toton III, Vladimir Veselov & Eugene Demchenko, George B. Dyson, Neil Gershenfeld, Michael Gross, Raymond Kurzweil, James Martin, Hans Moravec, Charles Platt and of course, myself.

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