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Alan Turing - a short bio for Alan01 by Mika 'Lumi' Tuomola



1912 June 23, Alan Mathison Turing is born in Maida Vale, London, England.

1926-30 Alan attends Sherborne School for boys, where he shows remarkable ability in mathematics and science, and falls in love with his slightly older friend Christopher.

1930 Christopher dies of tuberculosis. Alan, aged 18, becomes an atheist and adopts the idea that all phenomena, including human consciousness, must be materialistic.

1936 Alan publishes the paper on what are now called Turing machines, formal and simple devices capable of performing any conceivable mathematical problem represented as an algorithm. He has become one of the fathers of modern computer science.

1939-44 Alan serves in the British military at Bletchley Park during World War II and develops the bombe, electro-mechanical machine that deciphers the German Enigma code. It has been estimated that his invention shortened the war by two years.

1945 Alan is awarded the OBE, Officer of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his wartime services, while much of his research is kept secret by His Majesty's Government.

1950 Alan publishes the paper "Computing machinery and intelligence" that proposes an experiment now known as the Turing test: a computer could be said to "think" if a human judge, engaged in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, cannot reliably tell them apart.

1952 Alan is judged on "acts of gross indecency" after admitting to a sexual relationship with his acquaintance Arnold. Unrepentant Alan is convicted to probation and hormone therapy to achieve temporary chemical castration.

1952-4 Probated Alan works on mathematical biology, specifically morphogenesis and the existence of Fibonacci numbers in plant structures, while his body develops female forms. His later papers remain unpublished until 1992, when they contribute centrally to biological pattern formation and computer science.

1954 June 7, aged 41, Alan dies after eating an apple laced with cyanide. His death is ruled a suicide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

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