Who was Alan Turing?
Founder of computer science, mathematician,
philosopher, codebreaker, strange visionary and a gay man before his time:
1912 (23 June): Birth, Paddington, London
1926-31: Sherborne
School
1930: Death of friend Christopher Morcom
1931-34: Undergraduate at King's College,
Cambridge University
1932-35: Quantum mechanics, probability,
logic
1935: Elected fellow of King's College,
Cambridge
1936: The
Turing machine, computability, universal machine
1936-38:
Princeton University. Ph.D. Logic, algebra, number theory
1938-39: Return to Cambridge. Introduced
to German Enigma cipher machine
1939-40: The Bombe, machine for Enigma
decryption
1939-42: Breaking of U-boat Enigma, saving
battle of the Atlantic
1943-45: Chief Anglo-American crypto consultant.
Electronic work.
1945: National Physical Laboratory, London
1946: Computer and software design leading
the world.
1947-48: Programming, neural nets, and
artificial intelligence
1948: Manchester University
1949: First serious mathematical use of
a computer
1950: The Turing Test for machine intelligence
1951: Elected FRS. Non-linear theory of
biological growth
1952: Arrested as a homosexual, loss of
security clearance
1953-54: Unfinished work in biology and
physics
1954 (7 June): Death (suicide) by cyanide
poisoning, Wilmslow, Cheshire