Biographical Notes

  Alan Mathison Turing was born on 23 June 1912, in a nursing home in Paddington, London. His father Julius was employed in the Indian Civil Service.

  His father's brother, H. D. Turing, was, at the time, a well known expert on fly fishing.

  Alan spends his first thirteen years in India suffering through a series of intellectually discouraging English foster homes.

  Upon returning to England in 1926, he is entered into the Sherborne School.

  Meets Christopher Morcom in 1928, who was to become one of the key figures in his life. Turing is extremely attracted to Morcom. They form an intellectual companionship, which is highly stimulating to Turing.

  Morcom dies suddenly in 1930, devastating Turing.

  Turing then becomes obsessed with the problem of how the human mind is embodied in matter; of how the mind might be preserved after the death. Towards this end, he begins to study quantum mechanics.

  In 1931, Turing enters King's College in Cambridge. Now in a more liberal and tolerant environment, he becomes more open about his homosexuality. He enters into a casual relationship with a fellow undergraduate mathematician.

  Earns a distinguished degree in 1934, followed by a Fellowship of King's College in 1935.

  Through a lecture in 1935, he is introduced to Hilbert's question of Decidability, the Entscheidungsproblem: Could there exist, at least in principle, any definite method or process by which all mathematical questions could be decided?

  Turing's solution involves defining the "definite method" as a mechanical process in which a machine "reads" paper tape with symbols printed on it. He shows that the machine could be given, through the tape, a set of logical instructions to perform any task. He suggests that these tasks could be equivalent to what any human brain could perform (assuming a finite quantity of states of mind.) This Turing Machine is at the foundation of the modern theory of computation and computability.

  His paper, On Computable Numbers With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem is published in August 1936. In it, he expands Hilbert's question to introduce the concept of the Universal Turing Machine, which interprets the different algorithms of a myriad of Turing machines. This single Universal Machine interpreting the tasks of particular programs, Turning machines, is essentially what is understood today by the idea of a computer.

  In 1936, he is awarded a Smith's Prize for his work on probability theory.

  Goes to Princeton in this same year, works with Alonzo Church, who had arrived a similar conclusions regarding the Entscheidungsproblem. Completes his doctorate.

  Returns to Cambridge in 1938, attends classes on the philosophy of mathematics given by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

  Begins to work for the Government Code and Cipher School on cracking the Enigma Cipher being used by Germany during World War II and considered by many to be unbreakable.

  Britain declares war on 3 September 1939. Turing begins full-time work at Bletchley Park, the cryptanalytic headquarters. He solves the Enigma Cipher by the end of the year. Develops a machine for Enigma decryption.

  Proposes to a female colleague, but later calls it off, telling her about his homosexuality.

  Begins to study the rapidly developing electronic technology in order to build a Universal Turing Machine in electronic form. In 1944 he speaks of 'building a brain'.

  He is appointed Senior Principal Scientific Officer by the British National Engine, (ACE).

  In 1947, he spends a year at Cambridge, studying neurology and physiology. Writes a paper (unpublished in his lifetime) on what would now be called neural nets, suggesting that complex mechanical systems could exhibit learning abilities.

  Frustrated by delays and lack of support, he leaves the NPL, takes up cross-country running, almost qualifying for the 1948 Olympics.

  Becomes deputy director of the Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, works on MADAM, the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine.

  Publishes the influential paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence in 1950. He proposes the Turing Test as a method to determine if a machine possesses artificial intelligence. He predicts that by the year 2000 the technologies will be advanced enough to fool the average interrogator for about 5 minutes.

  Becomes interested in the mathematical theories of morphogenesis, writes an important paper, The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis, which is now considered one of the core documents in the field of non-linear dynamical theory.

  He is elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1951.

  In 1953, he is arrested after the police learned of his sexual relationship with a younger man. Turing offers no defense and takes care to emphasize that he does not consider his actions criminal.

  Instead of going to prison, he is offered the alternative of receiving estrogen injections, intended to "neutralize his libido". Turing accepts this alternative.

  Unknown to many, he had continued his involvement with the Government Code unit, the GCHQ. However, once his homosexuality became public, he lost his security clearance and was dismissed.

  On 7 June 1954, in Wilslow, England, Turing commits suicide by eating a cyanide laced apple.

Other Links

• Alan Turing Home Page maintained by Andrew Hodges
   

• Turing Home page: www.turing.org.uk - seems pretty exhaustive.
   

• The Turing Institute
   

• Alan M. Turing Biographical Information
   

• Alan Turing Page by Tom Sullivan
   

• Chatterbots, Tinymuds, and the Turing Test: Entering The Loebner Prize Competition by Michael L. Mauldin
   

• How to Pass the Turing Test by Cheating by Jason Hutchens
   

• The Turing Test Is Not A Trick Turing Indistinguishability Is A Scientific Criterion by Stevan Harnad
   

• Robitron Software Research, including:

  • FRED the Functional Response Emulation Device
     

• Nova Online page on the Enigma Cypher and cryptology in general
   

• Enigma Cipher Resources
   

• Intelligence and Security Links to Many Dangerous Places
   

• The Virtual Museum of Computing
   

• Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence A Bibliographic Compilation by David J. Chalmers
   

• The Turing Machine A Brief Article From Computers: Past and Present
   

• ALMA - Scores of the unfinished thought edited by Luigi Caputo

Major Works

• Collected Works of A.M. Turing: Mechanical Intelligence, (J.L. Britton, Editor)
   

• Collected Works of A.M. Turing: Morphogenesis, (P. T. Saunders, Editor)
   

• Collected Works of A.M. Turing: Pure Mathematics, (J.L. Britton, Editor)
   

• A. M. Turing's Ace Report of 1946 and Other Papers (Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing, Vol 10) by Alan Turing, et al. [OOP]

Related Literature

• Alan Turing: The Enigma - Andrew Hodges (May 2000)
   

• Turing: The Great Philosophers (The Great Philosophers Series) - Andrew Hodges
   

• Turing & The Computer (The Big Idea) - Paul Strathern
   

• Alan Turing : The Architect of the Computer Age - Ted Gottfried
   

• Turing Machines With Sublogarithmic Space (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol 843) by Andrzej Szepietowski
   

• The Turing Test and the Frame Problem: AI's Mistaken Understanding of Intelligence (Ablex Series in Artificial Intelligence) - Larry J. Crockett
   

• The Turing Programming Language: Design & Definition - Richard C. Holt, Philip A. Matthews, J. Alan Rosselet, J.R. Cordy
   

• The Universal Turing Machine : A Half-Century Survey (Computerkultur, Bd 2) - Rolf Merken (ed.)
   

• The Computer From Pascal To Von Neumann - Herman H. Goldstine
   

• Machines and Thought: The Legacy of Alan Turing - Peter Millican and Andy Clark (eds.)
   

• Connectionism, Concepts and Folk Psychology: The Legacy of Alan Turing - Peter Millican and Andy Clark (eds.)
   

• Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park - F. H. Hinsley & Alan Stripp (eds.)
   

• Station X: Decoding Nazi Secrets - Michael Smith (1/2000) (Bletchley Park)
   

• The Hut Six Story - Gordon Welchman (Bletchley Park)
   

• Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer As Dream & Reality by David Stork (ed)
   

• Build Your Own Universal Computer Interface by Bruce Chubb
   

• Robot Builder's Bonanza: 99 Inexpensive Robotics Projects by Gordon McComb
   

• Applied Cryptography: New 2nd Ed. Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C by Bruce Schneier
   

• Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner, Matt Lyons
   

• War of Desire & Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age by Allucquere Rosanne Stone
   

• Electronic Culture: Technology & Visual Representation by Timothy Druckery, Allucquere Rosanne Stone (ed/preface)
   

• Simians, Cyborgs & Women by Donna Haraway
   

• Modest Witness Second Millennium by Donna Haraway
   

• Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise Of The Music Of Language by Douglas Hofstadter
   

• Cryptonomicon: Neal Stephenson fictionalized history of cryptography, including Alan Turing. An engaging piece of work. (paper edition, due 6/2000)