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Alan Turing biography personal life. Alan Turing and the woman in his life - gingerbread house

Alan Mathieson Turing(eng. Alan Mathison Turing; June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954) - English mathematician, logician, cryptographer, inventor of the Turing machine.

Brief information about Alan Turing:

The article was prepared by Dmitry Maryin and Ildar Nasibullaev.

Birth name: Alan Mathieson Turing
Date of birth: June 23, 1912
Place of birth: London, England
Date of death: June 7, 1954
Place of death: Wilmslow, Cheshire, England

Beginnings

Little Alan had a very inquisitive mind. Having independently learned to read at the age of six, he asked his teachers for permission to read popular science books. At the age of 11, he performed quite competent chemical experiments, trying to extract iodine from algae. All this caused great concern to his mother, who was afraid that her son’s hobbies, which ran counter to traditional upbringing, would prevent him from enrolling in the Public School (an English closed private educational institution for boys, studying in which was compulsory for the children of aristocrats). But her fears were in vain: Alan was able to enter the prestigious Sherborne Public School. However, she soon had to fear whether her talented son would be able to graduate from this school...

The class magazine eloquently testifies to Alan's school successes - young Alan Turing did nothing in class, and in his free time he studied “extracurricular” sciences. As a fifteen-year-old teenager, he independently studied the theory of relativity: his diary notes would do honor to a junior student in our time.

The environment and style of education in the classical British school, which educates respectable and trustworthy subjects of the Empire, were not conducive to the further growth of such interests, which, moreover, Turing had no one to share with him. The subjects taught left him completely indifferent, he barely succeeded and in the end faced the real prospect of being refused a school certificate, which once again horrified his mother.

A youthful thirst for knowledge quickly brought Turing and Morcom closer together, and they became inseparable friends. Now they were already yawning together in French lessons or playing tic-tac-toe, while simultaneously discussing astronomy and mathematics. After leaving school, they were both planning to enter Cambridge University, and Alan, having gotten rid of many years of loneliness, may have been almost happy...

Those years were a period of rapid development of quantum physics, and Turing became acquainted with the latest work in this field during his student years. He is greatly impressed by J. von Neumann's book "Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics", in which he finds answers to many questions that have long interested him. Then Turing probably had no idea that a few years later von Neumann would offer him a place at Princeton, one of the most famous universities in the United States. Even later, von Neumann, like Turing, would be called the “father of computer science”... But then, in the early 30s, the scientific interests of both future outstanding scientists were far from computers - both Turing and von Neumann were involved in mainly problems of “pure” mathematics. (Note here Turing's mathematical work "The Equivalence of Left and Right Almost-Periodicity", published in 1935, in which he simplified one of von Neumann's ideas in the theory of continuous groups - a fundamental area of modern mathematics).

Turing came from an aristocratic family, but was never an “aesthete”: Cambridge political and literary circles were alien to him. He preferred to study his favorite mathematics, and in his free time he preferred to conduct chemical experiments and solve chess puzzles. He found relaxation in intense sports - rowing and running (marathon running would remain his truly passionate hobby for the rest of his life).

Cambridge students whispered that Turing never used time signals on the radio, but set his alarm clock by looking at the stars at night and making calculations known only to him (he listened exclusively to children's programs on the radio). While performing chemical experiments, he played a special game “Desert Island”, invented by himself. The goal of the game was to obtain various “useful” chemicals from “improvised means” - washing powder, dishwashing detergent, ink and similar “household chemicals”...

Turing brilliantly completes a four-year (undergraduate) course of study. One of his works, devoted to the theory of probability, was awarded a special prize; he was elected to the scientific society of Kings College - fellowship (something between graduate school and the teaching corps). It seemed that a successful career awaited him as a slightly eccentric Cambridge don working in the field of “pure” mathematics (don is how teachers are traditionally called in Cambridge and Oxford).

However, Turing never kept himself within any “framework”... No one could foresee what exotic problem would unexpectedly captivate him and what mathematically extraordinary way of solving it he would be able to come up with.

In 1935-1936 Turing creates a theory that will forever inscribe his name in science. The presentation of this theory - the theory of "logical computing machines" - will later be included in all textbooks on logic, foundations of mathematics and theory of calculations. "Turing machines" will become a mandatory part of the curriculum for future mathematicians and computer scientists.

Church-Turing thesis

A fundamental statement for many fields of science, such as computability theory, computer science, theoretical cybernetics, etc. This statement was made by Alonzo Church and Alan Turing in the mid-1930s.

In its most general form, it states that any intuitively computable function is partially computable, or, what is the same, can be calculated by some Turing machine.

The Church-Turing physics thesis states: Any function that can be computed by a physical device can be computed by a Turing machine.

The Church-Turing thesis cannot be strictly proven or disproved because it establishes an "equality" between the strictly formalized concept of a partially computable function and the informal concept of an "intuitively computable function".

Stopping problem

This is a solvability problem, which can be informally stated as: Given a description of an algorithm and its initial input data, it is necessary to determine whether the execution of the algorithm with these data can ever complete. The alternative to this is that it runs all the time without stopping.

Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm for solving the freezing problem for any possible input could not exist. We can say that the hanging problem is unsolvable on a Turing machine. Those. It was discovered that computers still cannot solve every mathematical problem.

Turing machine

A Turing machine is an abstract performer (abstract computing machine). It was proposed by Alan Turing in 1936 to formalize the concept of an algorithm.

A Turing machine is an extension of a finite state machine and, according to the Church-Turing thesis, is capable of simulating all other executors (by specifying transition rules) that somehow implement the process of step-by-step calculation, in which each step of the calculation is quite elementary.

The Turing Machine includes a tape that is infinite in both directions, divided into cells, and a control device that can be in one of many states. The number of possible states of the control device is finite and precisely specified.

The control device can move left and right along the tape, read and write symbols of some finite alphabet into the cells of the tape. A special empty symbol is allocated, filling all the cells of the tape, except those of them (the final number) on which the input data is written.

The control device operates according to transition rules that represent the algorithm implemented by a given Turing Machine. Each transition rule instructs the machine, depending on the current state and the symbol observed in the current cell, to write a new symbol into this cell, move to a new state and move one cell to the left or right. Some states of the Turing Machine can be marked as terminal, and a transition to any of them means the end of the work, the stop of the algorithm.

A Turing machine is said to be deterministic if there is at most one rule corresponding to each combination of state and ribbon symbol in the table, and nondeterministic otherwise.

A specific Turing machine is defined by listing the elements of a set of letters of the alphabet A, a set of states Q, and a set of rules by which the machine operates. They have the form: q i a j ->q i1 a j1 d k (if the head is in the state q i, and the letter a j is written in the observed cell, then the head goes to the state q i1, a j1 is written in the cell instead of a j, the head makes a movement d k, which has three options: one cell to the left (L), one cell to the right (R), stay in place (H)). For every possible configuration there is exactly one rule. There are no rules only for the final state, once in which the car stops. In addition, you must specify the final and initial states, the initial configuration on the tape, and the location of the machine head.

The intuitive understanding of a Turing machine is that there is an infinite tape divided into cells. A carriage rides across the cages. After reading the letter written in the cell, the carriage moves to the right, left, or remains in place, and the letter is replaced by a new one. Some letters stop the carriage and complete the job.

Any intuitively computable function is partially recursive, or, equivalently, can be computed using some Turing machine.

Decoding the Enigma code

In 1939, the British War Department tasked Turing with unraveling the secret of Enigma, a special device used to encrypt radio messages in the German Navy and Luftwaffe. British intelligence obtained this device, but it was not possible to decipher the intercepted German radiograms.

Turing was given free rein. He worked at Bletchley Park, a British cryptographic center, where he headed one of five groups, Hut 8, involved in deciphering Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe messages encoded by the German Enigma cipher machine as part of Project Ultra. Turing's contribution to the cryptographic analysis of the Enigma algorithm was based on an earlier cryptanalysis of previous versions of the cipher machine, carried out in 1938 by the Polish cryptanalyst Marian Rejewski.

In early 1940, he developed the Bomba deciphering machine, which made it possible to read Luftwaffe messages. The principle of operation of the “Bomb” was to enumerate possible variants of the cipher key and attempt to decrypt the text if part of the plaintext or the structure of the message being decrypted was known. The search for keys was carried out by rotating mechanical drums, accompanied by a sound similar to the ticking of a clock, which is why the “Bomb” got its name. For each possible key value given by the positions of the rotors (the number of keys was approximately 1019 for land-based Enigma and 1022 for cipher machines used in submarines), the Bomb performed a check against a known plaintext, carried out electrically. Bletchley's first Turing Bomb was launched on 18 March 1940. The design of Turing's Bombs was also based on the design of Rejewski's machine of the same name.

Six months later, they managed to crack the more resistant Kriegsmarine code. Later, by 1943, Turing made a significant contribution to the creation of a more advanced decryption electronic computer, Colossus, used for the same purposes.

The merits of Alan Turing were duly appreciated: after the defeat of Germany, he received an order and was included in the scientific group involved in the creation of a British electronic computer.

Creation of one of the first computers

Alan Turing participated in the post-war years in the creation of a powerful computer - a machine with programs stored in memory, a number of the properties of which he took from his hypothetical universal machine. In 1947, Turing created one of the world's first computers in Manchester. A prototype of the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) computer went into operation in May 1950. Turing was interested in the problems of machine intelligence (he even came up with a test that, in his opinion, made it possible to find out whether a machine could think).

In addition to his work at the university, Turing continued to collaborate with the Code Department. Only now the focus of his attention was already on the codes of the Soviet station in England. In 1951 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Scientific Society.

Founder of the theory of artificial intelligence

Turing is the founder of the theory of artificial intelligence. A Turing machine is an extension of the finite state machine model and is capable of simulating (given the appropriate program) any machine whose action is to transition from one discrete state to another.

Turing test

The Turing test is a test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 in his article “Computing machinery and intelligence” to test whether a computer is intelligent in the human sense. Turing proposed a test to replace, in his opinion, the meaningless question “can a machine think?” to a more specific one.

The test should be carried out as follows. The judge (human) corresponds in natural language with two interlocutors, one of whom is a person, the other is a computer. If the judge cannot reliably determine who is who, the computer is considered to have passed the test. It is assumed that each of the interlocutors strives to be recognized as a person. To make the test simple and universal, correspondence is reduced to text messaging. Correspondence should occur at controlled intervals so that the judge cannot draw conclusions based on the speed of responses. (In Turing's time, computers reacted slower than humans. Now this rule is necessary because they react much faster than humans.)

Turing predicted that computers would eventually pass his test. He believed that by the year 2000, a computer with 1 billion bits of memory (about 119 MB) would be able to fool judges 30% of the time in a 5-minute test. This prediction did not come true. Turing also predicted that the phrase "thinking machine" would not be considered an oxymoron, and that computer training would play an important role in creating powerful computers (which most modern researchers agree with).

So far, no program has come close to passing the test. Every year there is a competition between talking programs and the most human-like one, in the opinion of the judges, is awarded the Loebner Prize. There is also an additional prize for the program that the judges think will pass the Turing test. This prize has not yet been awarded. The A.L.I.C.E program showed the best results. winning the Loebner Prize 3 times (2000, 2001 and 2004).

Persecution for homosexuality and Turing's death

Everything collapsed literally in one day. In 1952, Turing's apartment was robbed. During the investigation, it turned out that this was done by one of his sexual partner’s friends. The scientist, in general, never hid his “non-traditional sexual orientation,” but he also did not behave defiantly. However, the theft scandal received widespread publicity, and as a result, charges of “indecent conduct” were brought against Turing himself. On March 31, 1953, the trial took place. The sentence implied a choice: either imprisonment or injections of the female hormone estrogen (a method of chemical castration). He chose the latter.

He was fired from the Code Department. Denied security clearance. True, the team of teachers at the University of Manchester took Turing into custody, but he almost never appeared at the university. On June 8, 1954, Alan Matheson Turing was found dead in his home. He committed suicide by poisoning himself with potassium cyanide. Turing injected the cyanide solution into the apple. Having bitten it, he died. However, his mother believed that he was poisoned accidentally because he always handled chemicals carelessly. There is a version according to which Turing specifically chose this method to give his mother the opportunity not to believe in suicide.

They say that it was this fruit, then found on Alan’s night table, that became the emblem of the famous computer company Apple. However, the apple is also a biblical symbol of knowledge and sin.

Remembering Alan Turing

The Turing Award is the most prestigious award in computer science, presented annually by the Association for Computing Machinery for outstanding scientific and technological contributions to the field. The award is sponsored by Intel and Google and currently comes with a $250,000 award. The first Turing Award was awarded in 1966 to Alan Perlis for the development of compiler technology.

Literature

Alan Turing, On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2, 42 (1936), pp. 230-265.
Turing A.M. Computing machines and the mind. Hofstader D., Dennett D. - Samara: Bakhrakh-M, 2003. - P. 47-59.
John Hopcroft, Rajeev Motwani, Jeffrey Ullman CHAPTER 8. Introduction to the Theory of Turing Machines // Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation. - M.: “Williams”, 2002. - P. 528. - ISBN 0-201-44124-1
Ivan Dolmachev. Article about Alan Turing.
G. Dalido. Notes on artificial intelligence: Turing Enigma.

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British scientist Alan Turing spent most of his life in India, where his father worked. From the very beginning of his biography, he was very different from his peers - he learned to read early, his favorite books were popular science publications, at the age of eleven his hobby became chemical experiments, and at fifteen he independently understood the theory of relativity.

Alan was bored at the privileged school where his parents sent him, and he devoted all his free time to studying mathematics, physics and chemistry.

At nineteen, Turing became a student at King's College, Cambridge University. When the time came to expect that the promising young man would have a beloved girl, and then the wife of Alan Turing, he realized that he was not at all attracted to the female sex, but was not very upset about it.

He wrote to his mother, who hoped to one day see his son’s bride, that in his circle there were many pretty young ladies with whom he enjoyed communicating.

His main hobby continued to be mathematics, and one of his scientific works, completed while studying at college and dedicated to the theory of probability, received a special prize, and Alan Turing himself became a member of the college's scientific society.

After graduating from university, the young scientist began to develop the theory of the “Turing Machine,” thanks to which he forever entered the history of science, and Alan’s personal life again faded into the background. In 1938, as Britain prepared for war with Nazi Germany, Turing was periodically involved in deciphering secret information about the movements of German troops at the code school at Bletchley Park, and when England officially entered the war, he devoted himself entirely to this activity.

He soon became the head of the department responsible for deciphering all the codes of the German Navy. And yet, nature took its toll - while working at Bletchley Park, he fell in love with Cambridge mathematics student Joan Clarke, who came to work in the Turing department. Despite the fact that Alan did not hide the truth about his homosexual inclinations from Joan, this did not prevent their close communication - the girl was fascinated by such a young man who had already achieved so much in science, who had a great sense of humor and a sharp mind.

Alan organized work shifts so that they could be at work at the same time, they went for walks together, found many topics to discuss - they were very good together, so much so that the scientist proposed to the girl, and Joan Clark should soon was to become the wife of Alan Turing. He bought her a ring, then they went to Alan’s relatives, who received the engaged couple very warmly.

In conversations with his fiancee, Alan even said that he would like them to have children, but this could only happen after the end of the war. The relationship between them was very warm, Alan and Joan felt good together, they had many common interests and hobbies. However, the plan was never destined to happen - after a few months, Turing realized that he himself would not be happy with Joan, and would not make her happy.

The break-up was difficult for both of them, but Alan did his best to make Joan understand that she was not rejected as an individual, so they remained friendly for the rest of Turing's life.

A few years later, Alan made an attempt to resume his previous relationship with Clarke, but she was against it.

Turing had affairs with men, and one of them ended badly for the outstanding scientist. Alan met a young worker who later robbed him. Offended by the guy, Turing wrote a statement to the police, and the detained robber publicly spoke about Alan’s homosexual inclinations, a trial took place, and only thanks to his enormous services to Britain, Turing was not sent to prison, but was prescribed compulsory treatment, which, in the end, led not only to a change in his body, but also to the destruction of his intellect.

When the treatment was canceled, it was already too late - the drugs had done their job, which the scientist could not bear. It all ended with Turing committing suicide.

Favorite fairy tale Alan Turing there was a fairy tale about Snow White. He was literally fascinated by the moment when the beauty falls dead after tasting a poisoned apple.

And when on June 8, 1954, he was found lifeless in his own apartment, a bitten apple lay on the bedside table - exactly the same as in the fairy tale about Snow White...

“School is a waste of time for him.”

Little Alan's outstanding abilities began to manifest themselves in early childhood. And when, at the age of six, the boy went to St. Michael's School in Hastings, its headmaster, having barely met him, predicted a great future for him.

At the age of 13, Alan was sent to the famous private school Sherborne in the city of the same name in Dorset. And very quickly it turned out that this educational institution was not very suitable for Alan. The Sherborne school was focused on training humanities students, and it had no need for a young mathematician.

“If he intends to stay in a private school, then he should strive to get an education. If he is going to be exclusively a “scientific specialist,” then a private school is a waste of time for him,” the director of the educational institution wrote to Alan’s parents.

The Cold War between Turing and the school lasted until the end of his studies. At the age of 15, he solved the most complex mathematical problems, despite the fact that he was not even taught the basics of mathematical analysis.

But Alan's weakness in the humanities led to him missing marks in his final exams. Because of this, he did not enter Trinity College, where he was going, but King's College, Cambridge.

During these years, student Turing was already hard at work searching for solutions to the most complex mathematical problems of our time.

Order for Enigma

At the age of 24, to formalize the concept of an algorithm, the young scientist proposed a model of an abstract computing machine, which became known as the “Turing machine.”

In addition to mathematics itself, Turing devotes a lot of time to studying cryptography. This is what attracted the attention of the British intelligence services to him, who assembled a team of scientists to master the most complex German military codes.

Turing was given the task of unraveling the secret of the German Enigma encryption machine, which was used to encode information transmitted by the ground forces, navy and air force of Nazi Germany.

Turing developed a theoretical basis for an electronic-mechanical machine for deciphering the Enigma code, which was called Bombe.

Bomb decryption machine. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Maximilian Schönherr

During the Second World War, Turing achieved enormous success in the field of military cryptanalysis - thanks to him, the Enigma code was completely deciphered, including its more complex version for the Navy. In 1942, the scientist began deciphering the Lorenz code, which was used by the Germans to transmit messages to the high command.

Thanks to the work of Turing and his colleagues, one of the first computers in the world was created, called “Colossus”. This machine cracked the Lorenz code, which allowed the Allies to keep abreast of the correspondence of the highest leaders of Hitler's Germany and shortened the duration of the war by at least several months.

In 1945, in secrecy, 33-year-old Alan Turing was awarded the Order of the British Empire by King George VI for his military service.

"Turing Test" and a mug on a chain

Among his colleagues he was known as a “strange guy.” Instead of repairing a bicycle with a flying chain, Turing calculated the intervals through which it flew off so that at the right moment he could simply correct it with his hand. Alan tied his own mug with a chain so that it would not be stolen.

But such oddities are common among many scientists. But only a few knew that mathematicians liked men.

In 1941, in an effort to end his addiction, Turing proposed to a colleague Joan Clark. The girl agreed; she was not embarrassed even by the fact that, in a fit of frankness, Turing admitted to homosexual inclinations. But such a reaction changed the scientist’s own decision - he terminated the engagement, deciding not to spoil Joan’s life.

In the post-war years, Turing continued to solve problems both in the interests of the military department and in the name of “peaceful science.”

Standard interpretation of the Turing test. Photo: Public Domain

In 1948, Turing writes a chess program for a still non-existent computer. In 1950, he proposed an empirical test, the purpose of which was to determine the thinking capabilities of a machine. The scientist’s idea was as follows: a computer can be considered to “think” if the person interacting with it cannot distinguish the computer from another person during the communication process. This test is called the Turing test.

By the early 1950s, Turing was at the zenith of his fame. He became the father-theorist of one of the world's first computers and became a member of the Royal Society of London.

Love and betrayal

Everything collapsed in 1952. For what happened, one can, of course, blame the British society of that time, which did not approve of homosexuality and punished it by law, but, on the other hand, Turing himself understood perfectly well what he was doing.

In January 1952, a 39-year-old scientist met a 19-year-old worker on the streets of Manchester. Arnold Murray. Turing liked the young man and invited him to dinner, offering to then continue their acquaintance at the scientist’s house. The worker agreed, but did not come. However, Turing was persistent, met Murray several more times and finally persuaded the young man to spend the night with him.

For some time, the scientist and the builder were lovers, and then Turing’s apartment was robbed, and Murray’s friends did it at his instigation.

The thieves apparently believed that Turing would not go to the police so as not to reveal his secret. But the scientist still called the police. Naturally, the relationship between Murray and Turing became known very quickly, and the mathematician did not deny that he slept with this man.

At various times in England, homosexuality could lead to execution or life imprisonment. In the early 1950s, laws became more lenient, but open homosexual activity was severely punished under the so-called Labouchere Amendment, which penalized any sexual activity between two men.

The trial, which lasted several months, ended with a predictable guilty verdict. Turing was given the choice of prison or chemical castration.

The scientist chose the second and over the course of a year of injections he turned into a person who is not interested in either boys or girls.

But this loss was small compared to the fact that Turing actually lost his job. The military refused his services, fearing that Soviet intelligence would catch him in a “blue honey trap.” The scientific community also began to ignore the genius of mathematics.

Idol of Jobs and the gay community

Turing spent his time playing board games. Having lost everything, he stopped valuing life.

It is known that Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning, but how exactly he poisoned himself is unclear to this day. The scientist's mother was sure that her son died in an accident, since Turing had recently become addicted to chemical experiments. Fans of Turing still believe that he was killed. The matter is further complicated by the fact that no one tested the same apple found near the scientist’s body for the presence of cyanide.

Another genius of the 20th century was an admirer of Alan Turing's talent - Steve Jobs. And, according to some, the bitten apple on the Apple logo did not appear by chance. In this way, Jobs paid tribute to the memory of a man, without whose work there would have been no success for Apple.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the rehabilitation of Alan Turing took place in Great Britain. In 2009, he expressed regret for the persecution of the scientist Prime Minister Gordon Brown. And after another four years Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain for charges of "obscenity."

As a result, a new unexpected turn occurred. Turing, declared “one of the main victims of global homophobia,” has become a symbol of fighters for the expansion of rights for the LGBT community.

In honor of Turing, loud mass events and gay pride parades are held. Today, the Enigma winner's homosexuality is given more importance than his scientific work. There is nothing to be done, this is the call of the times.

Modern mathematicians, programmers and computer engineers are familiar with the name Alan Turing from their student days: they all had to study the “Turing machine” - the “foundation of the fundamentals” of the theory of algorithms. Not a single serious textbook on mathematical logic and computability theory can do without a “Turing machine”.

Behind almost every outstanding scientific discovery there is an amazing story. Behind the "Turing machine" is the life story of a scientific genius - a genius who received worthy recognition only many years after his tragic death.

The role of A. Turing in the history of computer science is by no means limited to the invention of the “Turing machine,” as it may sometimes seem due to the relative paucity of published (in Russian) information about him.

Alan Turing can be counted among the galaxy of the greatest mathematical and philosophical minds who make up the pride of mankind, such as R. Descartes, G.W. Leibniz, B. Russell, D. Gilbert, A. Wittgenstein. It is surprising how much of a cruel joke his complete indifference to the struggle for priority in scientific discoveries played on Turing: until recently, his place in the history of the development of scientific and engineering ideas was presented very incompletely, if not one-sidedly (and not least thanks to some American historians science, who carefully cared about the absolutization of their national priority in the creation of computers, and, perhaps, in the creation of all computer science).

By the way, it was Alan Turing who first put into circulation the term “computer” in the modern sense. Before this, this was the name given to those who were involved in calculations, for example, bank employees who worked on an adding machine.

A plaque mounted on the wall of a London hotel reads:

"Alan Turing (1912 - 1954), codebreaker and computer science pioneer, was born here." Indeed, now (but by no means during his lifetime!) Turing is recognized as one of the founders of computer science and the theory of artificial intelligence; he is considered the first theorist of modern programming and, finally, the world’s first hacker. (By the way, his “hacking activities” made a significant contribution to the victory of the Allied forces over the German fleet during the Second World War, and one of Turing’s colleagues once said: “I don’t presume to say that we won the war thanks to Turing. However, without him we could I wish I could lose it.")

Alan Turing's future parents, Julius Matheson Turing and Ethel Sarah Stoney, met and got married in India. Turing served in the English Colonial Office, and Ethel Sarah was the daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras Railways. This was a respectable English aristocratic family, belonging to the so-called “upper-middle-class” and living in accordance with the strict traditions of the Empire.

A year after giving birth, Turing's mother returned to India, leaving Alan in the care of a family friend, a retired colonel. Later the boy was sent to a private boarding school.

The class magazine eloquently testifies to Alan’s school successes -

young Alan Turing did nothing in class, and in his free time he studied “extracurricular” sciences. As a fifteen-year-old teenager, he independently studied the theory of relativity: his diary notes would do honor to a junior student in our time.

Alan's first attempt to pass the preliminary exams at Cambridge, where they went together, was unsuccessful. But he was not too upset, because he was sincerely happy for Christopher, who successfully passed the tests and received a scholarship. Alan hoped to get in on his second try so he could study with his friend. On February 13, 1930, his Chris suddenly passed away. The sudden death of his best friend shocked seventeen-year-old Turing, plunging him into a deep and long depression. However, he, formerly the worst student in his class, found the strength to enter Cambridge. He was supported by a firm conviction of his duty to accomplish in science what Christopher could no longer do... Turing would not soon recover from the shock: already as a student at Cambridge, for several years he wrote letters to Morcom's mother imbued with mental pain. In these letters, he constantly returns to thinking about how the human Mind - and, in particular, Christopher's mind - is located inside the material shell and how it is freed from it at the moment of the physical death of the body.

In 1932, during one of his visits to the Morcom family, he compiled a document in their home called “The Nature of the Spirit” - a manifesto of his belief in the existence of the human Spirit after death. The main point of this work is that the determinism of the traditional physical picture of the world and its obvious contradiction with the idea of free will are refuted by the new science - quantum physics.

The question of the structure of the human mind will worry him all his life.

Turing was given free rein. He invited several chess-playing friends to his department of the British School of Codes and Ciphers. For example, Harry Golombek worked for him, who later became a famous FIDE judge and refereed the final match for the world championship title between Fischer and Spassky.

27-year-old Turing and his colleagues were seized with real sports passion. The Germans considered Enigma impregnable. The difficulty of deciphering was aggravated by the fact that the encoded word contained more letters than the original. However, within six months Turing developed a device, which he called the “Bomb,” which made it possible to read almost all messages from the Luftwaffe. And a year later, a more complex version of Enigma, used by Nazi submariners, was “hacked.” This largely predetermined the success of the British fleet.

The merits of Alan Turing were duly appreciated: after the defeat of Germany, he received an order and was included in the scientific group involved in the creation of a British electronic computer. In 1951, one of the world's first computers began operating in Manchester. Turing developed software for it. Then he wrote the first chess program for a computer. It was only an algorithm, because a computer capable of applying this program did not yet exist.

Chess was not this man's only hobby. He was involved in running and cross-country. In 1947, he took a respectable fifth place at the All England Marathon. In addition to his work at the university, Turing continued to collaborate with the Code Department. Only now the focus of his attention was already on the codes of the Soviet station in England. In 1951 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Scientific Society.

Turing injected the cyanide solution into the apple. Having bitten it, he died. They say that it was this fruit, then found on Alan’s night table, that became the emblem of the famous computer company Apple. However, the apple is also a biblical symbol of knowledge and sin.

Alan Mathieson Turing is a world-famous brilliant scientist, code breaker, pioneer of computer science, a man with an amazing destiny, who had a significant impact on the development of computer technology.

Alan Turing: a short biography

Alan Mathieson Turing was born in London on June 23, 1912. His father Julius Turing was a colonial official serving in Indian civil service. There he met and married Alan's mother, Ethel Sarah. The parents lived permanently in India, and the children (Alan and John, his older brother) were educated in private homes in England, where they received a strict upbringing.

The eccentricities of a computer genius

Contemporaries described Turing as a slightly eccentric man, not very charming, rather bilious and endlessly hardworking.

Being an allergy sufferer, Alan Turing preferred a gas mask to antihistamines. He wore it to offices during the flowering period. Perhaps this strangeness was explained by the reluctance to be influenced by the side effects of the drug, namely drowsiness.
The mathematician had another peculiarity in relation to his bicycle, the chain of which fell off at certain intervals. Turing Alan, not wanting to fix it, counted the revolutions of the pedals, got off the bike at the right moment and adjusted the chain with his hands.
The talented scientist fastened his own mug at Bletchley Park to the battery with a chain so that it would not be stolen.
Living in Cambridge, Alan never set his watch according to precise time signals, he calculated it mentally, fixing the location of a certain star.
Once Alan, having learned about the fall in the exchange rate of the English foot, melted down the coins he had and buried the resulting silver bar somewhere in the park, after which he completely forgot the location of the hiding place.
Turing was a good athlete. Feeling the need to exercise, he ran a long distance, determining for himself that he had succeeded in this sport. Then, in record time, he won the 3- and 10-mile distances of his club, and in 1947 he took fifth place in the marathon race.

The eccentricities of Alan Turing, whose services to Britain are simply invaluable, raised few eyebrows. Many colleagues recall the excitement and enthusiasm with which the computer science genius took on any idea that interested him. Turing was looked upon with great respect, as he stood out for his originality of thinking and his own intelligence. A talented mathematician, having all the makings of a qualified teacher, was able to solve and clearly explain any, even the most unusual, problem.

Alan Turing: contributions to computer science

In 1945, Alan refused to work as a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and, on the recommendation of M. Newman, moved to the National Physical Laboratory, where at that time a group was being formed to design and create the ACE - a computer. During the 3 years (from 1945 to 1948) - the period of the group's existence - Turing made the first sketches and made several important proposals for its design.

The scientist submitted a report on ACE to the NFL executive committee on March 19, 1946. The accompanying note stated that the work was based on the EDVAG project. However, the project contained a large number of valuable ideas that belonged directly to the English mathematician.

Alan Turing also wrote the software for the first computer. Computer science without the painstaking work of this talented scientist might not have reached the level it is today. At the same time, the first chess program was written.

In September 1948, Alan Turing, whose biography was connected with mathematics all his life, transferred to work in Nominally, he took the position of deputy director of the computer laboratory, but in reality he was listed in M. Newman's mathematical department and was responsible for programming.

A cruel joke of fate

The English mathematician, who continued to collaborate with intelligence after the war, was attracted to a new task: deciphering Soviet codes. At this moment, fate played a cruel joke on Turing. One day his house was robbed. The note left by the thief warned against contacting the police, but an outraged Alan Turing immediately called the police station. During the investigation, it turned out that the robber was one of the friends of Alan's lover. During his testimony, Turing had to admit to his gay orientation, which was a criminal offense in England in those years.

The high-profile trial of the famous scientist lasted quite a long time. He was offered either two years' imprisonment or hormone therapy to eliminate sexual desire.

Alan Turing (photo above in recent years) chose the latter. As a result of treatment with powerful drugs, which lasted for a year, Turing developed impotence, as well as gynecomastia (breast enlargement). The criminally prosecuted Alan was removed from secret work. In addition, the British feared that homosexuals might be recruited as Soviet spies. The scientist was not accused of espionage, but was forbidden to discuss his work at Bletchley Park.

Alan Turing's Apple

The story of Alan Turing is sad to the core: the mathematical genius was fired from service and banned from teaching. His reputation was completely ruined. At 41, the young man found himself thrown overboard from the usual rhythm of life, left without his favorite job, with a broken psyche and ruined health. In 1954, Alan Turing, whose biography still excites the minds of many people, was found dead in his own home, and a bitten apple lay on the bedside table. As it later turned out, it was filled with cyanide. This is how Alan Turing recreated a scene from his favorite fairy tale, Snow White, from 1937. According to some reports, this is why the fruit became the emblem of the world-famous computer company Apple. In addition, the apple is also a biblical symbol of the knowledge of sin.

The official version of the death of the talented mathematician is suicide. Alan's mother believed that the poisoning occurred accidentally, because Alan always worked carelessly with chemicals. There is a version that Turing deliberately chose this method of death in order to enable his mother not to believe in suicide.

Rehabilitation of an English mathematician

The great mathematician was rehabilitated posthumously. In 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly apologized for the persecution suffered by the computer genius. In 2013, Turing was officially pardoned for obscenity charges by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.

Alan Turing's work consisted not only in the development of information technology: at the end of his life, the scientist devoted himself to issues of biology, namely, he began to develop the chemical theory of morphogenesis, which gave full scope for combining the abilities of an exact mathematician and a gifted philosopher full of original ideas. The first sketches of this theory are described in a preliminary report in 1952 and a report that appeared after the scientist’s death.

The most prestigious award in computer science is the Turing Award. It is presented annually by the Association for Computing Machinery. The award, currently worth $250,000, is sponsored by Google and Intel. The first such important award was awarded to Alan Perlis in 1966 for the creation of compilers.