![]() He accepted a position at the National Physical Laboratory, where among other things, he pondered how his universal machine would work logically. Inventor of the computerĪfter the war, Turing never stopped asking questions. Most accounts of the Bletchley operation note that the work of Turing and others shortened the war in Europe by two to four years, and likely saved millions of lives.įor his contributions to code-breaking, Turing was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1946. According to the BBC, Winston Churchill once said, “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.”īy the end of the war, the British could decode all German naval messages. #Alan turing enigma crackedTuring personally cracked the code that was used by the U-boats in the North Atlantic, something that had bedeviled the British Navy since the outset of the war. Turing designed the Bombe, an early electronic machine that ran all the permutations of the Enigma code output, allowing the British to decrypt German transmissions and discover the locations of German ships and where they planned to attack. While there were calculators that could do basic mathematical functions, back in the 1930s and 1940s, there was no such thing as a ‘computer’ as we know it.ĭuring World War II his work with machines led him to a position in the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park, one of over 12,000 people who worked round the clock to break German Enigma codes. #Alan turing enigma seriesHis goal was to build a universal machine that could perform many different actions, such as doing computations, sorting a list, or running a series of permutations. Turing’s whole life centered on answering big questions, often using an unusual combination of mathematics and physics, and later also biology. Contributions to code-breaking helped the Allies win WWII It seems that he just didn’t make time for people who didn’t have a piece of the puzzle that he needed to solve a problem. But there’s no evidence he was cruel or unreasonable. Moreover, some of the people who worked for him found him difficult to talk to or actively disliked him. Often, though, he just wanted to be left alone to work out the solutions to complex problems that frequently even his professors and colleagues didn’t understand. He didn’t fit in most places, though he did make friends. Most of the people who knew him might have characterized him as eccentric. As biographer Hodges noted, Turing’s superiors called him an “undisciplined’ person who thrived on the lack of uniformity and the absence of any emphasis on rank.” He didn’t typically acknowledge hierarchies or demonstrate due respect for authority. #Alan turing enigma professionalin Mathematics from Princeton University.Īccording to biographer Andrew Hodges, when he was growing up, Turing’s family “thought of him devoid of common sense, and he in turn would rise to the role of absent-minded professor, brilliant but unsound.”Īnd indeed, throughout his school days and into professional life, Turing was known for his disheveled clothing, ink on his collar, and a disregard for many social norms. He was elected a Fellow of King’s College in 1935 when he was just 22. His friend’s death four years later from tuberculosis crushed the young Turing, who remained close with Morcom’s family for years afterward.Īfter a bit of difficulty completing his exams, Turing was accepted at King’s College, Cambridge, and in 1934 he graduated with a first-class honors degree in mathematics. His romantic feelings for Morcom may have been Turing’s first indication that he was homosexual. His loneliness was abated when he met Christopher Morcom, another boy who was fascinated by science. Rather than the usual teenage pursuits, he kept mostly to himself, running his own chemistry experiments in his spare time. Growing up, Turing had few friends and was a bit of an outcast. An odd child, today we might think of him as a nerd who was fascinated by science. According to Jeremy Fleming of the Bank of England, Turing’s appearance on the new currency not only recognizes his scientific contributions but “confirms his status as one of the most iconic LGBT+ figures in the world.” A quirky, often misunderstood misfitĪlan Mathison Turing was born on June 23, 1912. Today, June 23rd, on the occasion of Turing’s birthday, the British government will release a new £50 note to commemorate his life and achievements. You wouldn’t even be reading this article right now.Īll of these things are possible because of one man who was not only a brilliant mathematician and theorist who invented the computer, but also a gay man living at a time when it was illegal in the UK to engage in homosexual acts. We wouldn’t have cell phones, video games, smartwatches, robots, or even the Internet. Imagine where we would be if computers had never been invented. ![]()
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