Mathematicians
Alan Turing
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English mathematician and logician who, in a 1936 paper answering Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem), defined an abstract computing machine, now called a Turing machine, and used it to prove that no general algorithm can decide, for every possible mathematical statement, whether it is provable, an early and foundational result of computability theory. During the Second World War he led the team at Bletchley Park that broke the German Enigma cipher, work credited with shortening the war significantly. In 1952 he was prosecuted under British law for homosexual acts, then a crime, and accepted chemical castration in place of prison; he died in 1954 of cyanide poisoning, ruled a suicide, and received a posthumous royal pardon in 2013. This entity carries his mathematics and logic; his broader legacy in computing is also held on the family's Science and Technology atlases.
Facts
BirthplaceMaida Vale, London, England 1 Death PlaceWilmslow, Cheshire, England, of cyanide poisoning, ruled a suicide 1 Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionThe Turing machine (1936) and the proof of the undecidability of the Entscheidungsproblem, founding computability theory; wartime codebreaking of the Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park. 1 Notable WorkOn Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936) 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Science Atlas: Alan Turing, the same subject.
- Also in Technology and Engineering Atlas: Alan Turing, the same subject.
Sources
1. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University
MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
University of St Andrews, School of Mathematics and StatisticsAssociated With: Algorithm, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Turing/Quote, Associated With: Algorithm, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Turing/
In 1936 he published On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. It is in this paper that Turing introduced an abstract machine, now called a Turing machine, which moved from one state to another using a precise finite set of rules given by a finite table and depending on a single symbol it read from a tape.
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