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Alan Mathison Turing ( June 23, 1912– June 7, 1954) was a British mathematician, logician, and cryptographer, and is considered to be one of the fathers of modern computer science. He provided an influential formalisation of the concept of algorithm and computation: the Turing machine. He formulated the now widely accepted 'Turing' version of the Church-Turing thesis, namely that any practical computing model has either the equivalent or a subset of the capabilities of a Turing machine. During World War II he worked on breaking German cyphers, particularly the Enigma machine; he was the director of the Naval Enigma section at Bletchley ParkBletchley Park BP was the site of a secret British military intelligence operation during and just before World War II (WWII). The site was named after the mansion in the grounds of which it was established. While the mansion was part of the operation, ma for some time. After the war, he designed one of the earliest electronic programmable digital computers at the National Physical LaboratoryThe National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, based at Bushy Park in Teddington, near London. It is the largest applied physics organisation in the UK, and has a role similar to that of NIS and, shortly thereafter, actually built another early machine at the University of ManchesterUniversity of Manchester Motto: Cognitio Sapientia Hvmanitas Knowledge, wisdom, humanity. Established 2004 by the merger of the Victoria University of Manchester (established 1851) and UMIST (established 1824) Co-chancellors Anna Ford and Sir Terry Leahy. He also, amongst many other things, made significant and characteristically provocative contributions to the discussion " Can machines think?Synthetic consciousness refers to attempts by computer scientists and others to implement machines which, as a minimum, give the impression to observers that they possess aspects of consciousness. The term synthetic consciousness is preferred here to simu"1 Childhood and youth
Turing was conceived in 19111911 is a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). Events January-June January 1 Northern Territory is separated from South Australia January 3 In London, a shootout between Russian anarchists and the Scots Guard January 10 Major Jimmi in Chatrapur , IndiaThe Republic of India is a large multicultural country in South Asia, with a population of over one billion. The Indian economy is the fourth largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, and is the world's second-fastest growing economy.. His father Julius Mathison Turing was a member of the Indian Civil Service. Julius and wife Ethel (née Stoney) wanted Alan to be born in Britain, so they returned to Paddington where Alan was eventually born. His father's Indian Civil Service commission was still active, and during Turing's childhood years his parents travelled between England and India, leaving their two sons to stay with friends in England rather than risk their health in the British colony. Very early in life, Turing showed signs of the genius he was to display more prominently later. He is said to have taught himself to read in three weeks, and to have shown an early affinity for numbers and puzzles.
His parents enrolled him at St. Michael's, a day school, at six years of age. The headmistress recognised his genius early on, as did many of his subsequent educators. In 1926, at the age of 14, he went on to the Sherborne boarding school in Dorset. His first day of term coincided with a general strike in England, and so determined was he to attend his first day that he rode his bike unaccompanied over sixty miles from Southampton to school, stopping overnight at an inn — a feat reported in the local press.
Turing's natural inclination toward mathematics and science did not earn him respect with the teachers at Sherborne, whose definition of education placed more emphasis on the classics. But despite this, Turing continued to show remarkable ability in the studies he loved, solving advanced (for his age) problems in 1927 without having even studied elementary calculus.
In 1928, aged sixteen, Turing encountered Albert Einstein's work, and not only did he grasp it, but he extrapolated Einstein's questioning of Newton's laws of motion from a text in which this was never made explicit.
Turing's hopes and ambitions at school were raised by his strong feelings for his friend Christopher Morcom, whose young death affected Turing deeply.
