Alan Turing

Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. He devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts; the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 had mandated that gross indecency was a criminal offence in the UK. He died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon in 2013.

About Alan Turing in brief

Summary Alan TuringAlan Mathison Turing OBE FRS was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. He devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts; the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 had mandated that gross indecency was a criminal offence in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the appalling way he was treated. Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon in 2013. The \”Alan Turing law\” is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. The plaque was unveiled on the centenary of Turing’s birth on June 23, 2012, as recorded by a blue plaque on the outside of the house of the Colonnade Hotel, later the St Leonards-on-Sea. Turing’s father was the son of a clergyman, the Rev. John Robert Turing, from a Scottish family of merchants that had been based in the Netherlands and included a baronet.

His mother, Julius’s wife, was Ethel Sara Turing, daughter of Edward Waller Stoney, chief engineer of the Madras Railways. The Stoneys were a Protestant Anglo-Irish gentry family from both County Tipperary and County Longford, while Ethel herself had spent much of her childhood in County Clare. Julius’s work with the ICS brought the family to British India, where his grandfather had been a general in the Bengal Army. However, both Julius and Ethel wanted their children to be brought up in Britain, so they moved to Maida Vale, London, where Alan Turing was born on 23 June 1912. His parents purchased a house in Guildford in 1927, and he was later enrolled at St. Leonards St-Sea, where he later went on to become a schoolteacher. His father’s father, John, was still active in the civil service and retired with a civil service commission. His elder brother, John Turing, was also active and served in the British Army. The location is also marked with a blue plaque, now marked with blue plaque, and Turing’s parents stayed at Baston Lodge, Upper Maze Hill, Upper Leonards, for holidays during his childhood. He was later awarded an OBE for his services to computing in 1946. In 1948, Turing joined Max Newman’s Computing Machine Laboratory, at the Victoria University of Manchester, and helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology.