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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."
Okay, well that last one sounds a little more implausible than the rest--granted.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
'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
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
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...
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.
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.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
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.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
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.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."