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Looking At Turing
Jim Jones has written in with the first of a series that explores the history of Mr. Alan Turing, and his connection with digital computing.
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Next month, we will explore the workings of a Turing Machine and follow Alan into the war effort. We will see how a single man's true genius can turn the tide of war, and we will shake our heads in disbelief at a hero's humiliation and eventual death. Stay tuned.
It's kind of sad that Slashdot linked to the first part of this series rather than waiting for it to finish. The true depth of Turing's story lies in what happened during the war. If you've never read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, now is an excellent time to start; Stephenson's fictional Turing is an excellent read.
Many who have studied Turing's life believe that this book by Hodges is the definitive work of a man who was arguably a casualty of his lifestyle. Turing's answers to the three Great Questions of Mathematics - Completeness - Is Mathematics complete? Could every question be proven or disproven? Consistency - Does Mathematics always give the same answer? - and Decidability - did a chain of logic exist to prove or disprove any assertion - well, all of these were overshadowed by the fact that as a homosexual he defied God's Will - but all in all his contributions to Mathematics are staggering.
The lasting pervasiveness of this man's work - (who doesn't know what a "Turing Test" is?) - is a living testament to his genius. It's funny that on the same day we discuss the Nobel Prize we discuss the man most obviously deprived of it.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
I went to King's College Cambridge, where Turing has the computer room named after him, and where, like one of the college's other famous sons, Rupert Brooke, he is certainly remembered, and respected. Cryptonomicon and Turing: The Enigma are both excellent reads, but we should remember the three places where his name really should live on: first, the Turing Test (for AI), second, in the Turing Machine, and third, in the the Church-Turing hypothesis.
Alan wasn't the first scientist to be gay - though he was one of the first high-profile scientists to die at least partly as the result of his sexuality. I'm not sure whether he would have made a good poster child (as our US cousins would put it), but he was a fascinating person, and a great one. He was certainly one of the founders of our community - I wonder how he would feel about it now?
To anyone visiting Manchester in the North West of England, I'd recommend visiting the Turing Memorial. It's good to go in the evening, because in the dark the statue is very lifelike. I do an evening class in the building behind the statue (see photo) and even I jump sometimes when I cross the park on my way back, even though I've walked past the statue only two hours before!
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I was wondering if anybody else here thought the statue at the Turing Memorial in Manchester is just a little bit morbid? Honestly, I was offended at first and the statue made me think more deeply about the many populations that owe Turing a debt of gratitude, but still... Maybe looking at the apple was just a little bit too much for me. Couldn't he have had a book TOO?
A Transmission From PlanetJIM.[end trans]
Well, I guess for a good answer to that question, you need to know who the "we" are. I think that most people in the country as a whole are interested in science inasmuch as it can produce applications, and, in particular, applications which will affect their everyday life. For example, IMHO most people wouldn't consider what NASA does as "applied", since they don't see how they would benefit from it directly.
On the other hand, there is a large class of people who care about asking questions in a pure sense, and answering them without a lot of thought given to their applications. These people are the academics. For example, with few exceptions, academics fall into these this category. As a professor of (say) mathematics, one is rarely interested in commercial applications of the math one is doing, and depending on the field, not interested in whether the mathematics applies to anything at all. This is true of most academic fields. Historians ask those questions because they're the right questions to ask, not because it'll build a better motherboard.
Come on, give it up, that's