Honoring Alan Turing, "Father of Computer Science"

alphadogg writes "Google's Vint Cerf and others are spearheading celebrations in Silicon Valley and the UK this month to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing's birth. 'The man challenged everyone's thinking,' says Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, in an interview with Network World. 'He was so early in the history of computing, and yet so incredibly visionary about it.' Cerf — who is president-elect of the Association for Computing Machinery and general chair of that organization's effort to celebrate the upcoming 100th anniversary of Turing's birth on June 23 — says that it's tough to overstate the importance of Turing's role in shaping the world of modern computing. Turing's accomplishments included his breakthrough Turing machine, cracking German military codes during WWII and designing a digital multiplier called the Automated Computing Machine."

Comments

And he killed a dragon once with a vacuum tube

[crazyjj]

Okay, well that last one sounds a little more implausible than the rest--granted.

Re:And he killed a dragon once with a vacuum tube

[Anonymous Coward]

No one owes you their sperm.

Plus, it wasn't his homosexuality that prevented him from reproducing. Had he lived longer, for all we know, he may have chosen to donate some sperm. But we'll never know, because the effects of stupid laws pushed him to end his life far too prematurely.

He made people think. It finally killed him.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

'The man challenged everyone's thinking,' says Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, in an interview with Network World.

No wonder he was driven to suicide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death

But will they say gay?

[Fwipp]

I wonder if they'll mention his persecution by the British government for being gay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_turing#Conviction_for_indecency
How we reward our heroes in this world...

Re:But will they say gay?

[Trepidity]

Judging by the program for the meatspace event next week, it looks like no. Not even the abstract for the "Turing the Man" panel, which is probably the only one it'd really fit in, mentions his persecution by the British government. The description of what precisely the panel will discuss about his life is vague enough that it might be mentioned at the actual event, though.

Re:But will they say gay?

[MrEricSir]

A few months ago the British government decided not to pardon Turing for his "crime" of being gay.

Their reasoning for rejecting the pardon request seems reasonable:

"However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times."

So it seems that's been addressed by the British government recently. Even though full equality may be a few steps away -- and we shouldn't whitewash that fact -- it's also important to acknowledge that there was far more to Turing than his sexuality.

Re:But will they say gay?

[GodfatherofSoul]

I love the idea of leaving these illegal prosecutions on the books. It seems to inspire a false sense of closure when people are posthumously pardoned. About the only time it's tangibly relevant is when someone has a conviction on their records that blocks opportunities like employment.

Re:But will they say gay?

[Capsaicin]

I love the idea of leaving these illegal prosecutions on the books.

What was illegal about the prosecution?! Was he not convicted of a crime by due process of law upon evidence and beyond reasonable doubt?

The point of Lord McNally was making was that just because the particular offence "now seems both cruel and absurd," does not mean it was not at that point in history a criminal offence. That being the case a pardon is not appropriate. What is appropriate is that we recognise the criminal law ought not to intervene in the choice of sexual behaviour among consenting adults. And that we should be careful not to elect to the legislature people who would seek once again to make it so.

Re:But will they say gay?

[danlip]

A posthumous pardon isn't whitewashing history. It's an official admission from the government that they were wrong and a great injustice was done. If anything it draws attention to the injustice, which I would say is a good thing. Especially since we still live in an era where too many people think that gay people should still be prosecuted/persecuted.

Re:But will they say gay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its important to note that, in 2006 The british labor government pardoned, all british servicemen in WW1 who were executed. I believe this was to do with them recognising that shell shock was largely not cowardice, but was in fact an illness.

So pardons are possible.

Google doodle finally

[GoNINzo]

I've requested a Google doodle for Alan Turing's birthday for a couple years now. I'm just glad to hear they'll finally put one up.

Not just computers

[JoshuaZ]

Turing didn't just help with practical computers. A lot of his ideas mattered in many other fields. For example, his idea of the Turing machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine and related work was vital to a lot of other fields such as the rise of theoretical computer science, and even as far as the study of equations with integer solutions (called Diophantine equations) in the form of Hilbert's Tenth Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_tenth_problem.

Essentially, Hilbert asked whether there was a general algorithm to determine whether a given equation in integer variables had a solution. Even for individual equations figuring this out can be very difficult. For example it was known even in ancient times that x^2+y^2=z^2 had infinitely many integer solutions, but it took Fermat to show that x^4+y^4=z^4 did not. It turned out that there is no general way of answering these sorts of questions. The problem was solved by lot of people, especially Julia Robinson, Martin Davis, , Hilary Putnam, and ultimately finished off by Yuri Matiyasevich. The solution was to show that one can actually model an arbitrary Turing machine as a system of Diophantine equations, where the machine halting is equivalent to the Diophantine equations having a solution. Thus, if one can solve that one can answer whether any given Turing machine can halt, which Turing showed could not be done in general, using a clever trick- this is known as the Halting theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem. Curiously, the equivalent problem over the rationals is still open, and is turning out to be connected to deep issues in topology and the theory of elliptic curves. So Turing's ideas and thoughts are still pushing us forward and making us ask new questions.

Just sayin

[bigredradio]

Has anyone noticed this before.... just sayin.

Alan Turing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so sad on reflection when we look on how we (and I'm British) treated him, just because he was homosexual. I'm afraid that we've lost many greats over the ages because of their peccadillos. At least now for many (but not everywhere) this is not a issue. Now Alan is receiving the recognition he truly deserved, along with Charles Babbage and don't forget Ada Byron.

No, it was homophobia that killed him

[Relic of the Future]

Despite your implication, there is no "persecuted genius" (a /. reader wish-fulfillment dream for sure) story here. I mean, he was a genius, of that there is no doubt, and he was persecuted, but they weren't really connected. Even in his own lifetime his work was honored and well-received. Where the persecution comes in, is in the conviction for homosexual indecency, and having his security clearance (and thus, most of his ability to continue working) revoked, and being subjected to court-ordered chemical castration. But to know about that, you'd have to scroll up on the wikipedia page.

Re:No, it was homophobia that killed him

[Kupfernigk]

I think destroying someone's career because of his sexual orientation counts as persecution in most modern societies.

Re:No, it was homophobia that killed him

[newcastlejon]

I think destroying someone's career because of his sexual orientation counts as persecution in most modern societies.

Indeed, but the question was whether or not he was persecuted for being a genius.
He wasn't; he was persecuted for being gay... or to be more precise committing the then-crime of "gross indecency".

Re:No, it was homophobia that killed him

[icebraining]

He would only have "robbed" if he had killed fetuses or infants.

He "robbed" the world much like you are robbing me by not giving me all your money.

Re:No, it was homophobia that killed him

[Shihar]

So I can then I assume from your comment that you will hold fast to your beliefs that only the intelligent should survive and will yourself refuse to breed? Shitty bigots like you are the reason why Turing died. If Turing had been living in Boston today, he would have merrily continued with his work, gotten married to someone he loved, and if it tickled his fancy, have had a kid. The kid could have been from his very own sperm if that is so fucking important to you. It is kind of hard to breed when if it leaks out that your partner has the wrong naughty bits, the government castrates you. I suppose you think the Jews that got dumped into gas chambers in Auschwitz are also assholes for not breeding?

The bigoted British government of the 50s robbed the world of Turing passing down a legacy, not his sexual orientation.

Re:No, it was homophobia that killed him

[serviscope_minor]

I wasn't sure if your first post was a badly written joke or a troll. It seems you are persisting, so either you insist on repeatedly making bad jokes or you're a nutcase.

Please do use a favour and don't breed, so you don't rob future generations of oxygen.

(or, just in case you're joking, please don't breed because to world does not need more people who can't tell when their pet joke isn't funny)

Something else to remember...

[mseeger]

Please also remember, that he was driven into suicide by the nation he protected because he just was who he was. He had done nobody harm but was convicted because others decided what was morally acceptable between consenting adults.

Remember the talent we lost to bigotry :-(.

Re:Fuck the British government

[dkf]

To be fair, that all happened 60 years ago and many of those rules (including the ones making homosexuality illegal) are long gone. So too are virtually all the people involved (and the ones still alive are certainly no longer in a position to do much about it). About the only thing we can do now is say that it was a terrible shame that he died so young, and celebrate what he did achieve.

I've met Vint Cerf

[G3ckoG33k]

I've met Vint Cerf, who unlike Turing is alive.

Re:correction

[Samantha Wright]

Nah, during the fifties it was illegal to be cheerful, too.

Fuck Whom

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck them, and their stupid apology

The people who persecuted Turing are dead or so feebleminded by extreme age that I can guarantee they'll never bear any seriously responsibilities ever again. The people who did the apologizing didn't persecute him, any more than I have owned slaves kidnapped from Africa or you have broken treaties with the Sioux Nation.

But I guess you might say that makes the contemporary government's apology meaningless, thereby undermining all apologies and leading to a world full of cynical assholes who never believe someone else is sorry. Ok, fuck them for that.

Re:Fuck Whom

[kenh]

Many slaves were captured by rival tribes and traded to slave trades for trinkets, sold into the slave trade by their fellow countrymen.

Re:Fuck Whom

[pclminion]

As I tell my four year old when he messes up, you apologize but you also DO something about it. Just saying you are sorry is a platitude. Did Britain's apology come along with some tangible action or is it just useless verbiage?

Re:Fuck the British government

[SuricouRaven]

Blaming Britain today for the unfortunate event is no different than blaming America today for their support of slavery and then segregation. Cultures change. We're really rather embarassed about it now.

What about,,,

[kenh]

Charles Babbage & Ada Lovelace?

For you young whipper-snappers:

"Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871)[1] was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer.[2] Considered a "father of the computer",[3] Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.["

"Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 - 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; thanks to this, she is sometimes considered the world's first computer programmer."

Re:Fuck the British government

[osu-neko]

Blaming Britain today for the unfortunate event is no different than blaming America today for their support of slavery and then segregation. Cultures change. We're really rather embarassed about it now.

I neither owned slaves nor supported segregation. I have nothing to be embarrassed about on that score. The fact that I was born (due to no conscious decision of my own) geographically near the locations in which other people once did these things seems like a really bizarre thing to be embarrassed about.

Re:Fuck the British government

[jelizondo]

Unless, of course, you folks keep doing it today.

rust never sleeps

[PopeRatzo]

Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist

Interesting that a title like "Google's chief Internet evangelist" sounded so cool in 2000 now sounds so completely dorky.

The future is so 1999.

Not Turing. von Neumann.

[Animats]

Von Neumann was much more influential than Turing. Not only did von Neumann do brilliant work in multiple areas of mathematics, he invented modern computer architecture. Babbage's design was more like a Jacquard loom card reader coupled to a calculator. Turing's theoretical machine had to roll a long tape back and forth, and the cryptographic machines were essentially hard-wired or plugboard-programmed. Those machines are closer in concept to Hollerith/IBM tabulators of the 1920s to 1950s.

Von Neumann got computer architecture right. He saw that the right answer was RAM, with programs and data in the same memory: The device requires a considerable memory. While it appeared that various parts of this memory have to perform functions which differ somewhat in their nature and considerably in their purpose, it is nevertheless tempting to treat the entire memory as one organ, and to have its parts even as interchangeable as possible for the various functions enumerated above."

He also figured out that 1) everything inside the machine should be binary, not decimal, 2) memory sizes should be a power of two, 3) about 2^18 bits of RAM were needed to get any useful work done, 4) delay-line memory would work in the short term, but "iconoscope" memory (see Williams tube), which is random access, would be better, and 5) what a reasonable instruction set should look like.

Re:Not Turing. von Neumann.

[serviscope_minor]

Von Neumann was much more influential than Turing. Not only did von Neumann do brilliant work in multiple areas of mathematics, he invented modern computer architecture.

I'm not trying to denigrate von Neumann's achievements but...

Actually, pretty much all deeply embedded microcontrollers are Harvard architecture. Actually, most modern processers have separate paths from instruction cache and data cache making them much more like Harvard architecture than Von Neumann. That's why self modifying code is hideously slow on the modern CPUs that actually bother to flush things when a write aliasing the instruction cache is made. The other CPUs won't even see the modification.

Also, Zuse attempted to patent the idea in 1941.

He also figured out that 1) everything inside the machine should be binary,

All of Zuse's machines were binary as was Colossus. However, the last serious non-binary computer (Setun) performed very well, notably better than competing binary designs at the time.

Re:Not Turing. von Neumann.

[mattack2]

I haven't read the book, but read a review in the paper over the weekend.

"Turing's Cathedral", which, despite the name, is about the group led by Von Neumann
http://www.amazon.com/Turings-Cathedral-Origins-Digital-Universe/dp/0375422773

Re:correction

[networkBoy]

[hat tip]

Re:Not Everybody Worships Turing, Sorry

[deniable]

I thought it was von Neumann that got blamed for this rather than Turing. Then again, there's probably enough blame to go around.

Father of the computer science ?

[Taco Cowboy]

I don't think Alan Turing qualifies as the "Father" of computer science

Long before Alan Turing, Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace had already done incredible things with the Difference Engine

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

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

No offence to Mr. Turing's fanbois, but we need to give credit to where the credit is truly due
 

Re:Father of the computer science ?

[marcosdumay]

Keep in mind that "computer science" is not the science of building computers, and you'll understand why Turing got the title.

Re:Father of the computer science ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Keep in mind that "computer science" is not the science of building computers

Keep in mind that Lady Ada Lovelace didn't take any part in the "building computer" phase

The role of Lady Lovelace is in the "Programming"

Do read up Lady Ada Lovelace when you have the time
 

Re:Don't think so

[samoanbiscuit]

Here's some illustrative quotes from the article:

For example, in spite of claims that persons with same-sex attraction (SSA) are ‘born that way’ and can’t change, there is no scientific evidence that to back up these assertions,[1] and plenty of evidence that SSA is rooted in early negative experiences[2] and that change is possible.[3] Many teenagers who think they might be “gay” discover later they aren’t.

The last claim is true. Sexuality is confusing, and a lot of teenagers might think they're X when really they're Y, or even Z. Having more knowledge about the spectrum of human sexual behaviour just helps them solve their confusion quicker. Everything else in that paragraph is just plain bullshit.

Sexually transmitted diseases are rampant in the gay community. Since 1981, 300,000 MSM have died of AIDS, and 6,000 are expected to die this year and every year for the foreseeable future. According to the CDC, in 2008, 17,940 MSM were diagnosed with HIV infections, an increase of 17% from 2005. MSM accounted for 53% of all new infections. MSM are 44 to 86 times more likely to be diagnosed HIV positive than men who don’t.

Do you know why those health statistics use the term MSM (Men who have Sex with Men)? Because they encompass everything from gay and proud fashion designers who live in San Fransisco and attend pride, right down to conservative, anti-gay, religious leaders, so deep in the closet they might as well be in Narnia. If homosexuals/bisexuals were not forced by public opinion into hiding and marginalizing their sexual behaviour (and despite how gay and free the big cities are, it's still a thing in most countries, even the most progressive ones), it would be safer, much more like heterosexual dating patterns.

Did you know that as among abstinence only taught straight teens, sex remains just as high, yet condom usage falls much lower, and anal sex rates increase because girls think that preserving their hymens somehow maintains their "virginity".

This has diverted attention from Savage’s objective: promoting his “It gets better,” campaign, the purpose of which is to encourage confused and troubled teenagers to ‘come out’ and experiment with homosexuality.

Anyone with basic comprehension skills will realize within moments of reading/watching an "It Get's Better" testimonial that it has NOTHING to do WHATSOEVER with "converting" or "corrupting" young people into trying something they might not normally do, and EVERYTHING to do with telling young LGBT people who need to deal with fuckhead parents and communities with attitudes like yours, that they shouldn't despair, and definitely SHOULD NOT commit suicide, but rather soldier on till they become independent adults, then GTFO that cow town, and into the big city.

Re:Not Everybody Worships Turing, Sorry

[buglista]

What? A UTM is a mathematical model of a computer; yes, even your beloved parallel computers can't do anything fundamentally different to a UTM. The guy wasn't suggesting it as a programming paradigm, he was using it to prove things about Computability.

Re:Not Everybody Worships Turing, Sorry

[HarryatRock]

No worship, just admiration. The point about Turing machines is that Babbage didn't know he'd designed one. Although it's possible that Ada had an inkling about the "universality" thing which is what the great man was first to understand.
As for the software problems we face today, and the "parallelism crisis", there is nothing in Turing's work which can be blamed for these, or are you blaming him for not working on these?
Computation is not the same as IT, and failure to understand that may well be the root cause of the poor standards of program design we see today. In fact I am saddened by the thought that even some of the people praising Turing fail to grasp his real gift to us, the fundamental theorem on the unsolvability of the halting problem.

Re:Not Everybody Worships Turing, Sorry

[mcgrew]

How can you blame bad programming on the hardware? Early computers weren't paralell, so how can you blame that on Turing?

There's an old saying: a poor workman blames his tools. If your programs suck, you suck at programming. Period. Find a different field!

Re:Don't think so

[Kyrene]

"And in the case of feminists or homosexual militancy, what reasonable goal do they have left?"

Where should I start, or do you live with your head in the sand?

For women, earning the same as men. Not having our right over our own bodies and choice over childbirth being decided by men. Not having a government run by mostly men. Not being discriminated against in the workforce. Better healthcare. Elimination of the rape culture.

For the LGBT community...I think what they'd like is the freedom to be who they are without losing their jobs, being assaulted or murdered, you know...basic human rights.

That's just the short list. For the rest, well...I'd advise maybe getting out there and well, being in the world. Ya know.