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Alan Turing

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ALAN TURING (born Jun-23-1912, died Jun-07-1954, 41 years old) United Kingdom [what is this?] Alan Mathison Turing was born in London, England and during World War II, he contributed greatly to the defeat of Hitler using his remarkable insights into the science of cryptanalysis to crack most of the Nazis' encrypted communications. He is widely regarded as the father of modern computer science, largely due to his mathematical contributions which formalized the concept of the computer algorithm, and hypothetical computation engines (now known as Turing Machines), even before computers were a technological reality. According to Jack Copeland:* "At a time when the term 'computer' meant nothing more than a human clerk who sat at a desk doing calculations with paper and pencil, Turing envisaged a 'universal computing machine', whose function could effortlessly be transformed from word processor to desk calculator to chess opponent—or anything else that we have the skill to pin down in the form of a program. Like many great ideas, this one now seems as obvious as the wheel and the arch, but with this single invention, the stored program universal computer, Turing changed the world. In 1945 Turing went on to design a vast stored-program electronic computer called the Automatic Computing Engine—or ACE. The name was an homage to 19th century computing pioneer Charles Babbage, who proposed giant mechanical calculating 'engines'. Turing's sophisticated ACE design found commercial success in the English Electric Company's DEUCE, one of the earliest electronic computers to go on sale. The DEUCE became a foundation stone of the fledgling British computer industry, and, together with a small handful of other mark 1 computers—all in one way or another profoundly influenced by Turing's ideas—the DEUCE propelled the nation into the Computer Age. Turing also contributed to the triumph at Manchester, where Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams built the first computer with memory stored programs, which can be considered as a universal Turing machine realised in electronic hardware. Their 'Baby', the world's first modern computer, came to life in June 1948, the same year that Turing joined the Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester. He remained at The University of Manchester for the rest of his life." In 1948, working with his former undergraduate colleague, D.G. Champernowne, Turing began writing a chess playing algorithm. In 1952, lacking a computer powerful enough to execute the program, Turing played a game against Alick Glennie, in which he simulated the computer, taking about 30 minutes per move. The program lost that game, although it is reported that it scored a victory against Champernowne's wife. In the early 1950s, Turing was persecuted for his homosexuality, and prosecuted under British law. In 1954, Turing died from cyanide poisoning*, his death being ruled to have been suicide. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown released a statement on 10 September 2009 apologising and describing Turing's treatment as "appalling". The 100th anniversary of his birth was celebrated at The Alan Turing Centenary Conference.** Sources * http://www.economist.com/blogs/babb... ** http://www.turing100.manchester.ac.... Wikipedia article: Alan Turing

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page 1 of 1; one game    Game   Result Moves Year Event/Locale Opening 1. A Turing vs A Glennie 0-1 29 1952 Friendly game C26 Vienna

< Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 1 OF 4 ·  Later Kibitzing> Aug-10-05    Flyboy216: Alan Turing, perhaps the greatest mathematical mind of the 20th century, was purportedly an awful chess player. Legend has it that he tried hard but failed miserably at learning the game. Amazing how two intuitively similar disciplines are so orthogonal. Aug-10-05    WannaBe: Maybe that explains why I am so horrible at chess! LOL. Aug-10-05    trumbull0042: Being good at chess requires hard work and effort. A great mathematical mind, while it helps, is not at all sufficient. He probably didn't study the game very much. Aug-10-05    Catfriend: I see no reason to call Turing, with all due enormous respect I have for him, <the greatest mathematical mind of the 20th century>. Hilbert, Poincare, Russel, Goedel, Wiener, Erdos, Lovasz, Langlands, Lax and Neumann, just to name a few, could claim for superiority. Aug-10-05    cu8sfan: <Catfriend> I agree, there are just too many great minds and mathematics is probably too vast to single out one of them in a century. When it comes to impact of maths on world history Turing might well surpass those you mentioned, with the enigma and all that. Aug-10-05    Chesschatology: <cu8sfan> "with the enigma and all that." Oh yeah... and that thing called the "computer". Aug-10-05    cade: What's a computer precious? Aug-10-05    Robin01: I am confused. This is a chess site and not a math site. Why would Mr. Turning's picture and chess game be posted on this site, taking up valuable chess bytes? There are many pictures of great chess players missing from this site, and many good games of chess that need to be added. I have nothing against mathematicians, but can see no reason for posting Mr. Turning's picture and chess game (not a good one either) on this site. Am I missing something here? Aug-10-05    tamar: <Robin01> Chessgames.com is a work in progress. There are many more pictures and bios than when I started posting, and many are due to members's contributions. Aug-10-05    Chesschatology: <Robin01> Even beer has a picture here! Aug-10-05    Quant: <Robin01> a wheel perhaps? Aug-10-05    keypusher: <robin01> See the attached for a summary of Turing's work on chess and computers. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconVal... Aug-10-05    Robin01: <keypusher> I see the light. Turing did some good work on chess computers. Thanks for the article. <Cheschatology> Beer should have a picture everywhere! Aug-10-05    Parisien: Nice to see Alan Turing was also playin chess, like any ...oups i get cuted Sep-22-05    Flyboy216: Hence the "perhaps." In fact I'd say Ramanujan surpasses all in that list (consider Hardy's comparison of Ramanujan to Hilbert, e.g.), and is only paralleled by perhaps Gauss and Euler. Erdos, while being quite obviously prolific, I don't think belongs there (incidentally, my Erdos number is 3 ;-). I would throw in Kolmogorov too. Anyway, no matter. Back to chess! Sep-23-05    perfidious: In my opinion, Turing deserves mention here; it may well have taken a lot longer to progress to the super-tough computers we now have without his blazing a trail in the wilderness. In no way am I qualified to rate his extraordinary capabilities in maths vis-a-vis other great names, so I'll leave that to others. It was unfortunate that people couldn't let him be when it came to his sexual preferences, which in the end drove him to take his own life. Sep-23-05    Flyboy216: <It was unfortunate that people couldn't let him be when it came to his sexual preferences, which in the end drove him to take his own life.> So unbelievably tragic. Are you aware of the full story? He reported a break-in or somesuch, and during the routine police investigation it was found out that he was a homosexual. After being convicted of acts of "gross indecency," he was ordered by a court of law (!) to undergo hormone therapy to "correct" this apparently deplorable condition or else face imprisonment. He found death preferable. Sep-23-05    cu8sfan: Are there any known gay chess professionals? Sep-24-05    perfidious: <Flyboy216> The information I know comes from the book 'Spycatcher', which mentions none of the particulars you've outlined. What a waste. <cu8sfan> None living as far as I know, though the American master, Anthony Santasiere was. Sep-24-05    Happypuppet: I wouldn't say Turing was the greatest mathematical mind of the 20th century, but he was the biggest (or one of them) contributor to computer science. Sep-24-05    BishopBerkeley: A historic 1958 IBM paper titled "Chess-Playing Programs and the Problem of Complexity" takes one back to the early thinking of Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, and Alex Bernstein on the subject (here in PDF format). I love the Chess diagram in this paper! It looks to me like the work of a dreamy, artistically-talented child :) http://www.research.ibm.com/journal... I believe that some who are familiar with the story are not convinced that Mr. Turing's death was a suicide, though it clearly may have been. Alas, a too-short life! (: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :) Mar-26-06    McCool: I saw a movie on this guy and he was amazing with cracking the enigma code. He amazes you with his originality. A pure genious. Mar-26-06    EmperorAtahualpa: <I saw a movie on this guy and he was amazing with cracking the enigma code. He amazes you with his originality. A pure genious.> <McCool> Which movie was that? Mar-27-06    hitman84: hey is'nt he the father of modern computer science ? inventor of turing machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_T... Jun-23-08    brankat: R.I.P. Mr.Turing! Jump to page #    (enter # from 1 to 4) search thread:    < Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 1 OF 4 ·  Later Kibitzing>

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