Turing, Alan Mathison

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, 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; among his contributions was the Turing test, 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).

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Turing, Alan Mathison 

Born June 23, 1912, in London; died June 7,1954, in Wilmslow, near Manchester. British mathematician. Fellow of the Royal Society (1951).

Turing graduated from Cambridge University in 1935. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University, which he attended from 1936 to 1938. Turing worked in the British Foreign Office from 1939 to 1945. From 1945 to 1948 he was on the staff of the National Physical Laboratory, and from 1948 to 1954 he was affiliated with the University of Manchester. Turing’s principal works are on mathematical logic and computer mathematics. In 1936 and 1937 he introduced a mathematical concept that amounted to an abstraction of the notion of an algorithm and made possible a more precise definition of a computable function. This concept later became known as the Turing machine. During the last years of his life he worked on mathematical problems of biology.

REFERENCES

Kleene, S. C. Vvedenie v metamatematiku. Moscow, 1957. (Translated from English.)
Mashiny Tiuringa i rekursivnye funktsii. Moscow, 1972. (Translated from German.)
Trakhtenbrot, B. A. Algoritmy i vychislitel’nye avtomaty. Moscow, 1974.
Apokin, I. A., and L. E. Maistrov. Razvitie vychislitel’nykh mashin. Moscow, 1974.