Alan Turing

1. Alan Turing

2. Alan Mathison Turing was a British
computer scientist, mathematician,
logician and cryptanalyst. He had huge
influence on the development of computer
science. Turing is considered to be the
father of theoretical computer science
and artificial intelligence.

3. Early life
Alan was born in 1912 in
London. When he was 1 year old
parents left him in the care
of nannies and moved to India
where they lived before.
In 1926 a young Turing
started learning in Sherbone
School. From the beggining he
showed the signs of the
genius. In primary school he
also discoverd his sexual
orientation and he fell in
love with his friend
Christophere Morcomie who died
soon because of disease.

4. Studies
After Marcomie’s death Alan
decided to work much harder and
in 1931 he received scholarship
at King’s College in Cambridge.
During his stay at the
university he wrote probably
his most important thesis which
is called On Computable
Numbers.

5. Thesis
In Computable Numbers he
introduced abstract machine which
could calculate programmed
mathematical operations –
algorithms.
In this thesis he also introduced
the scheme of first computer. This
project was too difficult to be made
but technically everything was
correct.

6. Cryptology
In 1939 Government Communications
Headquarters proposed Alan to work as a
cryptanalyst in Bletchley. Just there a
man with group of Polish scientists
designed Turing bomb – device used to
break the Enigma code. This machine
greatly contributed to victory and
reduction of duration of the war.

7. Death
In 1952 Turing admitted to be
homosexual. For this reason he had
lawsuit and got a choice: go to
prison or special treatment –
chemical castration. On 7 June 1954
Alan Turing committed suicide.

8. Vocabulary
• computer science – informatyka
• Computer scientist – informatyk
• Cryptoanalyst – kryptoanalityk
• Artificial intelligence –
sztuczna inteligencja
• Computable numbers – liczby
obliczalne
• Thesis – praca naukowa
• Algorithms - algorytmy