Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist
He was bornt in 1912 in London in 1912. Since youth he showed an exceptional talent for mathematics and logic. He studied in King’s College (Cambridge University) and then in Princeton, where he obtain his doctorate in
Alan Turing was a British mathematician famous for having decoded the Nazi secret codes by its machine Enmigma, which helped win the II World War.
In 1936 he published an article called “On Computable Numbers”, where formulated the theorical concept of the “Turing machine”: an abstract mathematical model that set the basis on modern computation.
During the Second World War he leadered the
designing the electromechanic Bombe.
It is stimated that his work shortened the war between 2 and 4 years, saving million of lives.
He also was able to decode the Lorenz code, used by the High mando German, even more complex than Enigma.
He proposed the “Turing Test” in his article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (1950): a conceptual test to determinate if a machine could exhibit an intelligent behaviour indistinguible from a human one. That is the philosophical basis on current artificial intelligence.
Their last works were focused on morphogenesis: how biological patterns (leopard spots, zebra rays…) emerge from chemical processes through mathematical equations.
He was described as eccentric. He ran marathons to an almost professional level, with times similar to Olympian athletes, had a direct and clumpsy communication style, and used a methodical unortodoxal enfoque to solve problems.
He was homosexual and judged
He commited suicide
Lejos de ser admirado como un héroe, Turing fue acusado y juzgado por su condición de homosexual en 1952. (FILMAFFINITY)
Turing machine is Bombe, disegned by himself with previous aports of Polish criptologists (Marian Rejewski…) during 30 decade.
It was created to decode: proving automatically thousand of posibble combinations to find the correct configuration used that day.
Ojo, aparte está también la
The “Turing machine” is an abstract concept that Turing formulated in 1936
It is a fundamental model on computation: the basis of a computer.
Alan Turing commited suicide in 1954 by cianure poisoning with a bitten apple.
In 1952 he was prosecuted by “indencency grave” because of being gay (though lesbians also faced discrimination, homosexuality was only illegal for men).
To prevent jail, he accepted being chemically castrated by hormonal treatment with diethylstilbestrol, a synthetic estrogen. Estrogen disrupts the hormonal feedback loop that signals the testes to produce testosterone. It was the most common “chemical castration” method used in Britain at the time (1950s).
In most cases, it’s reversible once the person stops taking the medication. But it uses to provoke side effects, being depression a well-documented one. Reports describe him becoming down and physically changed during his treatment.
He reported fatige and having ginecomastia (breast development).
Un año de estrógenos sintéticos (DES) a dosis suficientes para suprimir la libido es más que suficiente para lograr ese efecto mientras se administra. Turing lo experimentó:
He also lost his security acreditation so wasn’t able to work for the Government, and lived under a social and legal pression.
In Turing’s case, the treatment (a one-year course of synthetic estrogen, essentially chemical castration via cyproterone acetate or a similar compound) ended in 1953, roughly a year before his death.
The treatment ended in 1953.
Homosexually was illegal in England until 1967, and the minimum age was 21 (heterosexual was 16) until 2001, which equaled ages.
Turing proposed marriage to Joan Clarke, a criptoanalist companion at Bletchley Park in 1941. She accepted and he confessed his “homosexual tendencies”. She said she didn’t care but finally he broke his commitment, arguing it wasn’t fair for her. They continued being friends until his death.
Arnold Murrray was a young main with whom Turing had a brief relationship in Manchester during 1951-1952. The investigation of a steal in Turing’s house (commited by a Murray’s known) led the police to find their relationship. They prosecuted Turing for “gross indecency” in 1952, according to the Criminal Law Amendment Act de 1885.
In 2013 he receibed a postumous pardon. In 2017 was approbated the “Turing Law”, which pardon retroactively thousand men condemned by similar laws.
In 2019 his face appeared in the 50 pounds billete.
The “Turing Award” is considered the Nobel Prize on Informatics.
- 2019: su rostro apareció en el billete de 50 libras esterlinas
- El “Premio Turing” es hoy considerado el “Nobel de la informática”
On 7th June 1954, he was founded dead, close to a bitten apple. The autopsy revealed the cause of death was cianure poisoning. The oficial veredict was suicide. There is a debate thought about it as he also worked with cianure.
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma — Turing’s work breaking the German Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park during WWII, using the electromechanical Bombe he designed (building on earlier work by Polish cryptologists).
Turing’s proof — His 1936 demonstration (in “On Computable Numbers”) that Hilbert’s Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem) has no general solution — meaning no algorithm can exist that determines, for every mathematical statement, whether it’s provable or not. He proved this by formally defining what “computable” means, via what we now call the Turing machine.
Turing machine — The abstract mathematical model he invented to formally define computation. It’s the theoretical foundation of all modern computing — every computer today is, in essence, a physical realization of this concept.
Turing test — His 1950 proposal for evaluating machine intelligence: a human evaluator has blind conversations with both a machine and a human, without knowing which is which; if the evaluator can’t reliably tell them apart, the machine “passes.”
Unorganised machine — A concept he introduced in 1948, describing networks of simple, randomly interconnected elements that could “learn” through a training process — considered an early conceptual precursor to artificial neural networks.
Turing pattern — Patterns that emerge from a system of two interacting, diffusing chemical substances (reaction-diffusion), which he proposed in 1952 to explain how natural patterns arise — like leopard spots or zebra stripes — from an initially uniform state.
Turing reduction — A concept in computability theory: problem A is “reducible” to problem B if a hypothetical algorithm solving B (an “oracle”) could be used to solve A. It’s a core tool for comparing the relative difficulty of computational problems.
“The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” — The title of his 1952 paper introducing the reaction-diffusion equations behind Turing patterns, mentioned above. Considered a foundational work in mathematical biology.
Turing paradox — Related to the halting problem: he proved no general algorithm can exist that determines, for any given program and input, whether that program will finish running or continue forever. It’s a direct consequence of his 1936 proof.
Want me to go deeper into any of these — say, how the halting problem actually works, or the math behind Turing patterns?