Hello again. We've been told to post something about Alan Turing, who was a British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner.
Alan Turing, considered father of modern computing, was born in 1912 and he was homosexual. That's why he is supposed to have killed himself ingesting cyanide in 1954, because that time homosexuality was punished (he was chemically castrated and condemned for 61 years). He's recently been reprieved by Isabel Queen.
He influenced the end of the second world war because he cracked the "unbreakable" nazi code Enigma through his electromechanical machine, which is considered as a precursor for modern computers. This machine made a set of logical deductions for any possible combination.
Another important thing he did is create the first detailed design of an ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), a computer of programmed storage. Analising this and wondering whether a computer could compose music or think, he made an experiment, the Turing Test, which considered a machine "smart" when a person was unable to distinguish computers' answers from real persons' answers. Nowadays we know the CAPTCHA, which is the reverse of Turing test.
He also made a chess programme, studied the Fibonacci numbers in nature, worked in cybernetics and started programming, for instance, so he was a great man with a sad ending.
In brief, Alan Turing made great progress in computing and science in general, and maybe, if it weren't for him, we wouldn't have all these smart gadgets or be so computing-developped.
I hope you learned a bit more with this post, have a great day.
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