Alan Mathison Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in Paddington, London. Turing’s father was a member of the British civil service in India. This would cause Alan and his brother to live in foster home in England. Being lonely at the time, Turing might have been inspired to learn about the operation of the human mind. At the age of thirteen, Alan enrolled at the Sherbourne School in Dorset where he showed promises in mathematics. While at school, he fell in love with a boy would died of bovine tuberculosis. It is believe that this death caused Turing to lose his faith in religion. This caused him to believe that all things in life could be explained by materialistic explanations.
After failing to win a fellowship at Trinity College, Turing received a fellowship from King's College in 1931. There, he was invited to stay as a tutor, but World War II and the Turing machine caused him to leave. Through out his life, Turing wrote papers for a wide range of subjects. He was fond of subjects which combined high-level thinking and hands-on experience.
In September of 1936, Turing studied under Alonzo Church at Princeton. At Princeton, he met John Von Neumann and offered Turing a post in 1938. Turing declined and returned to his fellowship at Cambridge. In August of 1938, Turing was contracted by the Government Code and Cypher School to consult them on breaking the German Enigma codes. There, Turing was the key figure in decoding messages from German U-boats. This was done by using the Bombe machine. Turing's role in breaking the Enigma code was not known till after his death because of restrictions. After returning to Cambridge, Turing was offered a job by the mathematics division of the British National Physical Laboratory. They wanted him to make a Automatic Computing Engine. After realizing that most of the people that he worked with during World War II had left, Turing went back to Cambridge. He then accepted an offer from the University of Manchester to help them the Mark 1 (Baby) in 1937.
Turing died in 1954 at the age of 41. He died from cyanide poisoning. It is believed that he killed himself with a apple that was laced with cyanide. This was caused by his charges of homosexuality. Turing's house was robbed and the man that he was having an affair with was known to the person that broke in. When police filed a report, they found out about Turing's sexual orientation. At the time, homosexuality was a crime in Britain. He was convicted of "gross indecency" in 1952. Instead of going to prison, Turing was injected with female hormones to try to cure his homosexual urges.
The Bombe Machine was use to decrypt the German Enigma code. Even though Turing was the father of this machine, Harold 'Doc' Keen was the person who designed this machine. This machine was located at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire. This machine was created in Poland and information on it was passed on to Britain nad France. The Bombe was also helped out by guesses called 'cribs'. This was useful because German messages contained common words and phrases. The Bombe was key in breaking the Enigma code.
According to some people, the Turing Machine was the first computer invented. The Turing Machine has a piece of tape and a head that can read and write symbols. What the head reads determines what symbol should be written. The tape stores data and small programs. This means that the head could run sub-programs.
TIME 100: Alan Turing
Alan M. Turing
The Alan Turing Home Page
Brendan Smith
Stony Brook University
CSE 301-History of Computing
Spring 2007
Last Updated on: 21 March 2007