Slashdot Mirror
Alan Turing, the Inventor of Software
Roland Piquepaille writes "BusinessWeek celebrates its anniversary with a series of articles about the great thinkers and innovators from the past 75 years. The series stars with a profile of Alan Turing, "Thinking Up Computers." In case you forgot, Turing is the man who created the concept of a "universal machine" which would perform various and diverse actions when given various sets of instructions. In other words, he laid out in the 1920s the foundations of software. You'll find the introduction of Turing's profile, plus more details, photographs and references in this overview."
I just finished Discrete Structures II. In this class we were to idealize a Turing machine, as a C program. We also went over Alan Turing's paper (the one linked in the article). My professor, who has been involved in cryptographic research for over 20 years, even he went so far as to say that Turing could be labeled a genius. Call me a dork, but I found the automatas to be one of the funnest parts of my CS education.
Turing was an amateur chemist in addition to being a world-class mathematician. His choice of suicide method was intended to lessen the impact it would have on other members of his family, in particular his mother. By eating a cyanide laced apple, it has been speculated that he wanted to make his death look like an accident. His mother would think that he had been performing some chemistry experiment, and then forgot to thoroughly wash his hands before eating the apple. Having one's son die is bad enough, but for it to be a suicide is doubly worse.
On the more dramatic side, if one were so inclined, it could be said that his method of suicide was rather symbolic. Turing had partook in what was in his day forbidden. For this, he had been "cast out" of his chosen profession and what he loved to do -- in some sense, his Eden. As a final gesture before leaving this world, he ate a piece of forbidden fruit that was symbolic of this fact.
It's a tragedy that the ignorance and intolerance of first half of the 20th century could have driven such a brilliant man to suicide. If it weren't for Turing, much of what we take for granted today may be a lot different or may not even exist at all. Hopefully the world has wisened over the last 50 years.
the turing machine wasn't so surprising after learning push-down automata. it was evident that the push-down automata, not being able to represent languages like L = { a^i b^j ^k | i != j != b != k }, was too limited for general computability. The turing machine was just the natural theoretical progression of computablility based on simple algorithm deduction. we can generate anything using a turing machine if we can come up with an algorithm for it.
the interesting thing about turing machines though is how they are maximal and nothing additional makes the turing machine more powerful (like non-determinism, multiple tapes, two way tapes, etc) because those can all be simulated with a regular turing machine using an algorithm adjustment.
- tristan
In Manchester (in the UK) you can find a statue of Alan Turing. It is in Sackville Park in the city centre, right by the Gay Village. He is holding an apple, which is meant to represent the way he took his life. The first time I saw that statue was quite late in the evening and at first I thought there was somebody actually sitting there - it was a very spooky moment.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Play with that a while, and you'll see why that was such a bitch to crack.