Turing, Alan Mathison definition of Turing, Alan Mathison in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Turing, Alan Mathison, 1912–54, British mathematician and computer theorist. While studying at Cambridge Univ. he began work in predicate logic that lead to a proof (1937) that some mathematical problems are not susceptible to solution by automated computation; in arriving at this, he postulated a universal machine, now called a Turing machine Turing machine, a mathematical model of a device that computes via a series of discrete steps and is not limited in use by a fixed maximum amount of data storage.
..... Click the link for more information. , that was the theoretical prototype of the electronic digital computer. After completing a Ph.D. at Princeton Univ. (1938), he returned home to England, where, during World War II, he was instrumental in deciphering German messages encrypted by the Enigma cipher machine. After the war, he helped design computers, first for the British government (1945–48) and then for the Univ. of Manchester (1948–54). During this period, he produced a body of work that helped form the basis of the newly emerging field of artificial intelligence artificial intelligence (AI), the use of computers to model the behavioral aspects of human reasoning and learning. Research in AI is concentrated in some half-dozen areas.
..... Click the link for more information. ; among his contributions was the Turing test Turing test, a procedure to test whether a computer is capable of humanlike thought. As proposed (1950) by the British mathematician Alan Turing , a person (the interrogator) sits with a teletype machine isolated from two correspondents—one is another person,
..... Click the link for more information. , a procedure to test whether a computer is capable of humanlike thought. He committed suicide shortly after being arrested for a homosexual offense.

Bibliography

See biography by A. Hodge (1983).