BIOGRAPHY OF ALAN TUNNING
Friday, November 29, 2019
Biography of Alan Turing
Alan Madison Turing was born in
London on June 23rd in 1912 and he will die on June 7th in 1954, he was
considered one of the most important cryptographers of the XX century.
His amazing skills took him to decodificate a german machine named
Enigma. In order to accomplish the decoding of Enigma the english
government decided to hire some of the best and important cryptographer
in UK, beside Alan Turing. They would have worked together at a military
base named Bletchley Park. In this place Alan worked really hard with
all the members of his team but soon some circumstances complicated his
work: at the time there were some laws about homosexuality. Alan had
been homosexual since young age, but he used to hide it until the police
made him confesse it because it was unacceptable that one of the
english government’s collaborator was gay. This situation was terrible
for him and at 41 years of age he fell into depression and killed
himself. Alan’s parents were all employees for the royal family. Since
he was young he had shown some particular interest in scientific
subjects. At the end of his studies, he took his degree and went to
Cambridge to attend the scientific school. During these years at
university, he wrote an article where he explained all about his
invention: he invented a machine known as The Tuning’s machine. Soon the
English government put him at the leadership of the best
cryptographer’s team in the UK. Their services started when England
decided to take part in the second world war. Their goal was to decode a
german code produced by Enigma. They received by government a machine
named Bomba to facilitate their work but Alan saw that it wasn’t
reliable so he decided to create his prototipe machine named The
Turing’s machine. Alan with his team had to decode million of different
combination everyday: at the beginning this work was done without any
machine so it was an impossible mission, even because the settings to
decode Enigma used to change every 24 hours and at the end of this time
the team had to restart from the beginning. Alan had an idea: he thought
that only a machine was able to decode an other machine, so he started
to crate his own one. It took a lot of period for the machine to work
correctly, but at the same time the war continued and the english
government loss his patience and had contrasts with Alan and his team.
After long days at work Turing decoded Enigma and helped the UK to
discover a german plan and this made them winning the war. The English
government told Turing and his friends that all documents and every
testing paper had to be eliminated because their mission was top secret
and no-one could get to know anything about it. This decision meant
that Alan and his team were never recognized with their work: after
their death the world got to find out their great job. Alan was accused
of being homosexuals and then processed. The government had given him
two possibility to eliminate his “problem”: or two years of detention
nor chemical castration. He chose for chemical treatment and this took
him into a deep depression: he took his own life. There are some
mysterious things about his suicide. In 2012 a team of scientists won a
nobel award and decided to send a letter to prime minister Cameron: the
wanted to make him apologize publicly to Alan for what he had to suffer
1. The father of the computer also dabbled in physics, biology, chemistry and neurology
Turing’s most notable work today is as a computer scientist. In 1936, he developed the idea for the Universal Turing Machine, the basis for the first computer. And he developed a test for artificial intelligence in 1950, which is still used today.But he also studied physics, especially as a young man. He read Einstein’s theory of relativity as a teenager, and immediately filled a notebook with his own thoughts and ideas on the subject. He dabbled in quantum mechanics, a new field at the time, as well as biology, chemistry and neurology after the war. Much of this work was related to creating machines that could learn and “think”, but some of it came out of simple curiosity about the world.
Callas
2. He stuttered when talking
It is true that he had a bit of a stammer, something dramatic portrayals of Turing have exaggerated, Hodges said. He “took his time finding the right words,” he explained. In his biography he notes that a BBC radio producer had called Turing a very difficult person to interview for that reason.3. He didn’t keep his sexuality a secret among friends
The laws at the time prevented Turing from being openly gay, but he never kept his sexuality secret either. He was open with his social circles at Kings College in Cambridge, which was “an oasis of acceptance” at the time, Hodges said. Many people would have clung to that oasis, he said, but Turing branched out to continue his work.In 1952, he was arrested and charged with “indecency” after a brief relationship with another man. Defiant, he did not deny the charges.
“When he was arrested, the first thing he said was he thought that this shouldn’t be against the law,” Hodges said. “He gave a statement that was unapologetic, that detailed what had happened.”
4. He refused to let a punishment of chemical castration stop him from working
The punishment for homosexuality was chemical castration, a series of hormone injections that left Turing impotent. It also caused gynecomastia, giving him breasts. But Turing refused to let the treatment sway him from his work, keeping up his lively spirit.“He dealt with it with as much humor and defiance as you could muster,” Hodges said. “To his close friends, it was obvious it was traumatic. But in no way did he just succumb and decline. He really fought back … by insisting on continuing work as if nothing had happened.”
He openly talked about the trial, even in the “macho environment” of the computer lab. He mocked the law’s absurdity. In defiance, he traveled abroad to Norway and the Mediterranean, where the gay rights movements were budding.
Homosexuality was considered a security risk at the time, and the conviction cost Turing his security clearance. That was a harsh blow, and Hodges believes that when he was restricted from leaving the country anymore, it ultimately led Turing to suicide.
“After he’d been revealed as gay in 1952, he couldn’t do any more secret work,” Hodges said. “It would have been hard to accept that he was not trusted.”
5. He was an Olympic-level runner
He participated in a few sports, such as rowing, but he loved running. Turing had “a bit of a ‘smelly trainers’ aspect” to his personality,” Hodges said. To work it into his day, he often ran to the places he needed to go. He used to run the 10 miles between the two places where he did most of his work, the National Physical Laboratory and the electronics building on Dollis Hill, beating colleagues who took public transportation to the office.He joined running clubs, becoming a competitive amateur and winning several races. In 1948, his best marathon time was 2 hours 46 minutes 3 seconds — only 11 minutes slower than the Olympic winning time that year.
When one of his running club members asked why he trained so vehemently, he replied, “I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard.”
7. He got bad grades and frustrated his teachers
Science was a considered a second-class pursuit in English public schools in the 1920s, Hodges said. Turing’s passion for science embarrassed his mother, who had hoped he would study the classics, which was the most acceptable pursuit for gentlemen.But he got bad to mediocre grades in school, followed by many complaints from his teachers. His English teacher wrote:
“I can forgive his writing, though it is the worst I have ever seen, and I try to view tolerantly his unswerving inexactitude and slipshod, dirty, work, inconsistent though such inexactitude is in a utilitarian; but I cannot forgive the stupidity of his attitude towards sane discussion on the New Testament.”