Turing Up for What?

Alan Turing was a man at the forefront of creation during his lifetime. He was a revered cryptologist, mathematician, and one of the first computer scientist. He was born in England and studied at University of Cambridge with a concentration in Mathematics from 1931-1934. He became a fellow at the university upon graduation and subsequently published a paper which mentioned a machine capable of computing anything that is in fact computable. This gave way to the ideas of modern computers. After the publication until 1938, Turing worked on his Ph.D. from Princeton, in Mathematics and Cryptology.

          (A Picture of Benedict Cumberbach portraying Turing in The Imitation Game 2014)

One of his most notable accomplishments however, was preformed during World War 2. After obtaining his Ph.D. Turing went on to work at the Government Code and Cypher School, at Bletchley Park. He was able to intercept the German Code and decipher it by creating a bombe, a giant machine that would enable him to crack the code through the use of rotors.

The reason I picked this person to write this article on Alan Turing is because he envisioned most of what he did. There were little to no resources in which he theorized his ideas of computers and artificial intelligence and straight up created that field and molded it into what it is today. One of his key accomplishments is what is known as the Turing test, which was a theory about a computer being able to exude the intelligence and intuition if a human so that it is indistinguishable from a real person. Also, through his ingenuity, he was able to decode the German code which was able to help win the war efforts by an estimated 2-4 years. Turing was a man ahead of his time, and set the path for many of today's modern inventions, since we rely on computers so much today. Turing Died in 1954, due to cyanide poisoning, potentially self-inflicted. He was a man who left behind a huge legacy, and one that we continue to use in our everyday lives to strive towards a better tomorrow.







(A replica of the bombe that was used to break the German Code.)