Top Banner
Alan Turing: an Introductory Biography Andr ew Hodg es Wad harn Co llege, Univers it y of Oxf or d Summary. A short d( 'script.ion of the events a nd issues in t he life of Alan Turing (1912- 1954). The Turin g Day cO llfer ence at the Sw iss Federal hlstitute of Techn ology, L au sann e, was held to mark th e nilletieth a.JIni ve ninry of Alan T mill g's bir th, which fell on 23 rd June 2002. Turing's life was so s llOrt t hai fUl'ther e vent s will soon ma.rk t he fift ieth a nni v('l'sary of his de ath Oll 7th .June 2004. But in that span b et ween 1912 and 1954 Alall Turiug di d pionc ('ring IVOl"k, e llcompassing the fo unda.tions of computer sc ience, wliich sti ll co ntillues to stitllulate a nd in spire. As th is vo lum e illu st rates, the breadth and de pth of Turing's wOl 'k, as well as itCi dramatic int.e nsit y, cOlnpe llsat es for its ch ro llological brev il y. Alan Turing's bio graph y is int erwovell witll the COUUiC' of twent.icth- century hist.ory n ne! fa ll s naturally iuto pr e- war, wartime and post -war pe riod s. He was born iuto the Drihih Ilppel'-tlliddlc c1aCis wlli cIt had confide ntly run the iIll per ial administratiotl unt.il the Fil'st. \ iVorl d vVar, but which , und er th e imp act of eco llomic a.nd poli tica l nis i::; , lost control t hereaft e r. In a v('ry broad sellSC'. Alall Tlll'ing helollged to a new) mo derni zing ge neration II' !tieh remt ed COlltClllpl' ltOusl y agaillst Vi cto rian va. llles. Du t Alan Tmillg's ca dy life was llliuked by det a climcnt from t.h e ob li gat or y socia l trailling , rat her thall rclw ilioll ag(lillst it. It was also mar ked from the start by hi s iutcns ely individu a l respOllse to scienc e and math e mati cs, in pa r ticular to th e relativi ty a1l d qU H ntulll mechallics which had tran sforme d t. he physical sciclI ces since 1900. He bc c:a lllC a ll under gradu ate at Kin g's College, Cambridge Ullivcr sit y, ill 1931 , reading math em atics and graduating wi th dist.inctioll in 1934. Very s oon , in 1935, th e lc ct me:o of M . H. A . (jI, Iax ) Newlilan at Calll- brid ge introduced him to the front ie r of m at. hematical logic , Iv hic!t likewise had been tran sfor med since 1900. But logic WHS llei th e r T1U'illg '::; illll1lecl iat.e nor his only choice. It was his wo rk in prob a bilit.y theory th at \NOIl him a Fellows hip of Kin g's College ill 1935, a nc! he migltl' easily hav e cOIltinued in thi s field , or in the m at hem at ical physics that bad fir st. at tr acted him. Thu:o he came to logic: fr om a wid e b Ac kground in P Ul' C a ue! a pplicd ma thema.tics, a ud it was in this ecle ctic spirit that he aU acked the E nt sc heidun g spr ob - lem of David Hilb ert , wh ich a t t.ha.t point rel11a.ille d all outstan din g quest. io ll.
6

Alan Turing: an Introductory Biographycs.furman.edu/~ktreu/fyw-turing/assign/turing_bio.pdf · Alan Turing: an Introductory Biography . Andrew Hodges Wadharn College, University of

Apr 30, 2020

Download

Documents

dariahiddleston
Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Page 1: Alan Turing: an Introductory Biographycs.furman.edu/~ktreu/fyw-turing/assign/turing_bio.pdf · Alan Turing: an Introductory Biography . Andrew Hodges Wadharn College, University of

Alan Turing an Introductory Biography

Andrew Hodges

Wadharn College University of Oxford

Summary A short d( scription of the events a nd issues in t he life of Alan Turing (1912- 1954)

The Turing Day cOllference at the Sw iss Federal hlstitute of Technology Lausanne was held to mark the nilletieth aJIni ve ninry of A lan T millgs bir t h which fell on 23 rd June 2002 Turings life was so s llOrt t hai fUlther events will soon mark the fift ieth a nniv( lsary o f his death Oll 7th June 2004 But in that span between 1912 and 1954 Alall Turiug did pionc(r ing IVOlk ellcompassing the foundations of computer science wlii ch sti ll contillues to stitllulate and inspire As this volume illustrates the breadth and depth of Turings wOlk as well as itCi dramatic intensity cOlnpellsates for its ch rollolog ical brev il y

Ala n Turings biography is interwovell witll t he COUUiC of twenticthshycentury history nne fa lls naturally iuto pre-war wartime and post-war periods He was born iuto the Drihih Ilppel-tlliddlc c1aCis wlli cIt ha d confidently r un the iIllperial administratiotl unti l the Filst iVorld vVar but which under the impact of ecollomic and poli tical nisi progre~sively lost control thereafte r In a v(ry broad sellSC Alall T llling helollged to a new) moderniz ing generation IItieh remted COlltClllpl ltOusly agaillst Victo rian vallles Du t Alan Tmillgs cady life was llliuked by detaclimcnt from the ob ligatory social trailling rather thall rclw ilioll ag(lillst it It was also marked from the start by hi s iutcnsely individua l respOllse to science and mathematics in pa rticular to the relativi ty a1ld qUHntulll mechallics which h ad transformed t he physical sciclIces since 1900 He bccalllC a ll undergradua te at Kings College Cambridge Ullivcrsity ill 1931 reading mathem atics and graduating wi th distinctioll in 1934

Very soon in 1935 the lcct meo of M H A (jI Iax) Newlila n at Calllshybridge introduced him to t he front ier of mathematical logic Ivhict likewise had been transformed s ince 1900 But logic WHS llei ther T1Uillg illll1lecl iate nor his only choice It was his wo rk in proba bility theory that NOIl him a Fellowship of Kings College ill 1935 a nc he migltl easily have cOIltinued in this field or in the m athemat ical physics that bad first at t racted him Thuo he came to logic from a wide bAckground in P UlC a ue a pplicd ma thematics a ud it was in t his eclectic spirit that he aUacked the E ntscheidungsprobshylem of David Hilbert wh ich a t that point rel11ailled all outstanding quest ioll

I

4 Andrew Hodges

Turing working alone and only twenty-three attacked and settled this probshylem using his defin ition of computability His famous paper On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidllngsproblem was published at the turn of 1936 - 37 A complete outsider to the fi e ld he won a place in the subject lith a cOllcept which after 60 years remains definiti ve His defini tion of computability showcd there could be no geleral method for deciding the provabili ty of mathematical propositions and ma rked the (lei of attempts to formalize a complete systelll for mathematics But it also opened the way into new fi elds which now wc would recognize as computer science and the cogni ti ve sciences

A lthough Turing thereafter found himself classed as a logician he was more a mathematician who applicd himse lf to logic and mOle than that a scientist who behind the mathematics felt a dcep concelll for the fundamenshytal questions of mind and mattcr His underlying interest ill the problcm of mind showed up in the bold statements about humall lIlell10ry and statcs of m ind which informed his argluueIlts His backgrounci in phys ics was hill ted ect in the machincs with which hc lIlade his clefinition of computability the now-famous Turing machiles l1lnning 011 paper tape an inwge of 1930s modernity It was this concreten(ss which maee Turillgs definition of COlllshyputability much more satisfactory t hall the lllClthell1atical dcfi lli t ioll offered hy Alonzo Church the Princeton logician wlIo lee the fie lcl Matlwlllatically Turings defini t ion WeiS equi valellt to Church Bu t the descriptioll of the Turing machine gave a convincing arglllliell t for why it ovas t hat this mathcshylIlatical ctcfin ition complete ly captured the concept of cffectively calculable

Each Turillg machine rcprescuts all algorithm fo r 1ll0derll reaclcrs it is hard not to see it as a computcr program ane to bc( ill mind that COIllshy

)Juters did not t hen exist But T ur illg specificaly dcfillcd it type of l1lacllillC call ed universal capab le of reae ing the illstlllctioll tablc of allY othelmiddot llWshychine This is precise ly the principle of the stored-progralll digital cOlllPu ter then yet to corne into being It is possible t hat Tmillg evell then clltCltaillecl the poss ibility of constructi llg s Llch a nwchillc for he certaillly illterested himself in elec trical a nd mecllall ical COlllPutation Bllt if so he left 110 notcs 01 observations OIl this ques t ioll Rcither be was pri lllarily engagcd ill i wide variety of mathematical researches In late 1036 Tllling joillcd Cltlllch group at Princeton and there embarked on mOle advanced logic bllt a lso Oil work in a lgebra and on developing thc theory of the Ricmallu zeta-function fllllshydamental to the study of primo llumbers Tlte ll1atiJ(lllatician John von Nellshymann offerecl him a post at Princeton to continue lllltlthelllatical research bnt he chose to return to England in s limmer 1938 consciolls of the impendiug conflict with Germany and already prepared t o ma kc a special contribution to it

Whilst the Seconcl vVorlci vVar took ma ny of ltis scient ific contemporaries into the phys ics of radar a nd the atomic bomb it took Alan Turing into n ypshytology After 1938 his grappling with the illfini tudes of mathcnllt1lical logic

was complemented by the fini of the German Enigma encip brilliant 1 olish contribution r

method of test ing a probabl( logical scheme was rapidly ll1i

vices called Bombes which fro of decipherment throughout t the now famous center at Blet increasingly large sectors of tl Turing remained the chief scie logic of the Bombe lay in Be idence a development close Turing led what was in effect personal cha rge of the crucial approach triumph in the batt the developing course of Lhe N

odds and later as the work t ional scale handing over the was ecl ipsed the United State

Turings personality t raits bridge environment slIy bllt Ot

not well adapted to military I

Anglo-American relaLiollship him the top-level tecliuical lia voyage to America in the wint1 tIe None of this experiellce he from his primary vocatioll as his scientific calling was well i experience For after J943 Tllr scale digital electronic lllachin sible a practical version of his he m ade the constllldion of s arranged his work so as to gail - designing and building an [ of t he Second Worlct War he h mot ivated not by miHtary or ec scope of the compul~Hhle and with human mental processes

For his war work which s Turing was honored with the work remained completely sec vantRge from it in his subsequo pmiod began with grea t prorr Illcnt a t the National PhysicE

5 Introductory Biography

was complemented by the finite but still highly challenging logical problem of the German Enigma enciphering machine In 1939 partly thanks to a brilliant Polish contribution Turing was able to propose a highly ingenious method of testing a probable word for Enigma-enciphered messages His logical scheme was rapidly materialized in very large electromechanical deshyvices called Bombes which from 1940 onwards vvorked as the central engines of decipherment throughout the war For this work Turing was based at the now famous center at Bletchley Park Buckinghamshire which recruited increasingly large sectors of the British intelligentsia Amongst these Alan Turing remained the chief scientific figure His central contribution after the logic of the Bombe lay in Bayesian statistics for measuring weight of evshyidence a development close to Shannons theory of information measure Turing led what was in effect a scientific revolution and because he took personal charge of the crucial U-boat message problem was able to see his approach triumph in the battle of the Atlantic Alan Turings role mirrored the developing course of the war at first a lone British fi gure against all the odds and la ter as the work developed on a major industrial and transnashytional scale handing over tl1e British cOlltribution to the power by which it was eclipsed the United States

Turing S personality traits became more striking when outside the Camshybridge environment shy but outspoken nervous but lacking deference he was lIot well adapted to military manners or to the diplomacy of the embryonic Anglo-American rela tionship But his commanding scientific authority made him the top-level technical liaison between the wartime Allies demanding a voyage to America in the winter of 1942-43 at the height of the Atlantic ba tshylIe None of this experience however gave him a taste for power or detracted from his primary vocation as a pure scientist The undiminished tenacity of his scientific calling was well illustrated by the lise he made of his wartime experience For after 1943 Thring knew from Bletchley Park work that largeshyscale digital electronic machinery had the speed and reliability to make posshysible a practical version of his uni versal machine F01l1 that point onwards he made the construction of such a machine his prillcipal ambition and he arranged his work so as to gain persona experiell(( of electronic components - designing and building an advanced speech scrambler And so at the end of the Second iIorld War he had a plan for an electronic computer but it was motivated not by military or economic needs It was for the exploration of the scope of the computable and in particular for comparing machine processes with huma n mental processes He called it building a brain

For his war work which some would judge critical to the Atlantic war Thring was honored with the modest British formality of an OBE But his work remained completely secret until the mid-1970s and he derived no adshyvantage from it in his subsequent scientific career Nevertheless the post-war period began with great promise for he was invited to take up an appointshyment at the National Physical Laboratory near London in October 1945

i

i

6 Andrew Hodges

and his electronic computer plan the proposal for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was swiftly adopted in IvIarch 1946

At that time which was before the word computer had its modern meanshying Turing l -ed the term Pract ical Universal Computing Ivlachine But alshythough fond of the word practical Turing did not have the human gift of gett ing his practical way with people and institutions who did not share his vishysion From t he outset it became clear that the NPL had no clear idea on how it was to build the machine he had designed and it failed to adopt a policy speedy enough to satisfy Alan Turing Turings plans for software exploiting the universality of the machine were t he strongest feature of his proposaJ but they were li ttle developed or publicized because of the dominat ing problem of hardware engineering Impatient fol progress Turing took up marathon running to near-Olympic standard but this did not relieve the stress In the au tumn of 1947 he returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year and while there was approached by Max Newma n since 1945 professor of rnathematshyics a t Manchester Uniwrsity to take an appointment there instead Newman had played a most important part at Bletchley Park after 1942 and had orgashynized a section using the most sophisticated electronic machinery he was also fu lly acquainted with Turings logical ideas At Manchester he had rapidly recru ited both Royal Society funding and top-rank engineers and by June 1948 a tiny version of the universal machine principle was working there shyin marked contrast to the lack of progress at the NPL Turing accepted the appointment as Deputy Director of the Computing Laboratory But a lready in 1948 it became clear that the engineering would dominate the Manchester environment and before long both lewman and Turing were sidelined and did not direct anything at a ll

Turings programming never exploited the advanced possibilities he had mapped out in 1946 and he failed also to write the papers that could have esshytablished his claim to the theory and practice of modern computing Instead the main theme of his work became the more futuristic prospect of Artificial Intelligence or intelligent machinery as he called it Already prefigured in 1946 this was expounded in papers of 1947 1948 and 1950 arguing strongly that computable operations could encompass far more than those things conshysidered merely mechanical in common parlance and indeed cou ld emulate human in telligence The last of these papers the only one to be published in his lifetime appearing in the philosophy journa l lVI ind has become famo us for the Turing Test and its 50 prophecy and stands still as a fl agship for confidence in the ultimate mechanizabi lity of JVIind But Turings construcshytive arguments for how Artificial Intelligence might be achieved are perhaps as significant as the long-term vision Notably his ideas encompassed both the top-down and the bottom-up ideas that were to become bitter rivals in later AI research But it is also notable that he did very li ttle to follow up these ideas with active research even when he had the resources of the Manchester computer

In 1951 Turing was cl citation referring to his 193 though he had largely fai led his wartime achievement 11 strating the part he could mathematics tha t began ill a mathematical explanatiO interest in biology that wen in advanced methods for stl the computer simulat ions computer

At the end of 1951 TUl for mathematical biology VI

for logic But at just this P he was always in danger f homosexual act ivity all ill The trial in March U)52 r oestrogen He fought hard tant open and unashamed at Manches ter In 195l the well have been related to til new category of security r work he had previously bee wou ld not have Call1l( ~d the story however Turillg also in his morphogenetic thmr of the quantum mechauics however cut off by his deat Cheshire in 1954 by 1ll()(lU

wished to do so to believe

An awkward figurc wb Turing was wrapped up ir intense personal intcgrity of science but his large cal of the Turing Test setl ing cheekier side of En)lih ell

he of a1l people original an advocate of the view thaL t

scientific in spiri t his apr perhaps any other inclividl found his life enveloped by

The strange drama of A a lasting life in public com enigma but so too cloes the

7 Introductory Biography

In 1951 TUring was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society the citation referring to his 1936 work This was a wat ~rs hed year for Turing alshythough he had largely failed in the immed iate post-war period to capitalize on his wartime achievement he now started a quite fresh development demonshystrating the part he could still have in the great expansion of science and mathematics that began in the 1950s His new ambition was that of giving a mathematical explanation for morphogenetic phenomena thus showing an interest in biology that went back to ch ildhood but which was now expressed in advanced methods for studying nonlinear partial difrerential equations with the computer simulations which had just become possible on the Ivlanchester computer

At the end of 1951 Turing submitted a first paper on this work which for mathematical biology was to be as important a hi 1936 work had been for logic But at just this point Alan Turing was arrestee A a homoexual he was always in danger from the law which at that time criminali zee all homosexual activity an injudicious liaison turned that potentia into fact The trial in March 1952 resulted in his being forced to accept injection of oestrogen He fought hard to prevent thi from arreting his work Unrepenshytant open and unashamed Alan Turing found himself a very isolated figure at Manchester In 1953 there was another crisis with the police which may vell have been related to the fact thai as a known homosexua he fell into the new category of security risk one who could no longer continue the secret work he hac previously been doing His holiday abroad to less hostile clime would not have calmed the nerves of security officer Amidst this Cold Var story however Turing also found time not only for substantial developments in hi morphogenetic theory but for a stab at a new field the interpretation of the quantum mechanics that had first absorbed him in youth All this was however cut oH by his death by cyanide poisoning at his home at Vilmslow Cheshire in 1954 by means mot likely contrived by him to allow those who wished to do so to believe it an accident

An awkward figure who delighted yet often infurin tfd hi friends Alan Turing was wrapped up in world events and yet most concerned with an intense personal integrity Writing as plainly as he spoke he was an Orwell of science but his large capacity for frivolity as illustrated in hi discussion of the 1lring Test set ting gave him an honorable place ill the lighter and cheekier side of English culture His life was full of paradox not least that he of all people original and socially nonconforming should be the foremost advocate of the view that the mind was purely mechanical The most purely scienti fic in spirit his application to war work was of greater effect than perhaps any other individual scientist Committed to honesty and truth he found his life enveloped by secrecy and silence

The strange drama of Alan Turings death in 1954 has ill its way given him a lasting life in public consciousness His s tate of mind at death remains an enigma but so too does the true inner story of his life Prickly and proud yet

8 Andrew Hodges

self-effacing Thring wrote little about the development of his ideas There is the unknown background to his fascination ~ h the problem of Mind where only juvenile fragments survive There is t he question ra ised by Newman of whether he might have done greater things in mathemat ics bu t for the war and the ques tion of the real motiva tions for Turings aba ndonment of deep mathematical work for the sake of the war The vexed ques tion of the emergence of the digi tal co mputer in 1945 and of Thrings relationship with von Neuma nn remains a gap at the heart of 20 th -century t echnology The true genesis of his Artificial Intelligence program during the war and the question of whether his concern for the significance of Codels theorem was really resolved - all this remains unknown spur to 21st-century thought and our fascination with the theory and practice of intelligent life

References

1 Agar J (2001) Turing and the Unive rsal fvIachine (Cambridge Icon) 2 Dav is vI (2000) Tire Universal Computer (New York orton) 3 Hodges A (1983) Alan Turing the enigma (Burnett London Simon amp Schusshy

ter New York new editions Vintage London 1992 Walker New York 2000) Further materia l is on http www turing org uk

4 Hodges A (1997 ) Turing a natura l philosopher (Phoenix London ROulI(dge New York 1999) Included in T he Great Philoso phers ed~ R Monk and F Raphael (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2000)

5 Holtigc~ A (2002) Ala n M Turing in E N Za lta (ed) Stallford E ncyclopedia of Philosophy httpplato stanford edu

6 Newman Iv H A (1033) Ala n JVI Turing Biographical memoirs of the Royal Society 253

7 Turing A JV (19922001) Co llected Works eds J L Britton R O Gandy D C Ince P T Saunders C E 111 Yates (Amsterdam North-Holland )

8 Turing E S (1959) Alan td Turing (Cambridge IldltT) 9 The Turing Digita l Archive a t http www turingarchive org offrs an onshy

line version of the Turing archive of papers a t Ki ngs College Cambridc

Alans Apple

Valeria Patera

TIMOS Tcatro Event Associ

Summary A play by Valeri

1 The Authors ViE

My study 011 Alan Turin~ eticphilosophical approacb from the various papers prf

My aim was not to prOt rather to create a theatrical spatial and temporal conte] on a virtual plallc iudivid outsiders

Thus stylized moments modern t ragedy hut with clt of this eminent Illathenwtilt power and his disarming hlt adventures of two yOllng pl surfing the Net

The Thring Test is reill anism a deus cx machinH t

cyber culture created by till in Bletchley Park duriug tlH father of the modern hacklt than anyt hing else emhodi( able invention the computE computer has qlJ(~stiol1ed a

of Western cult urp ill fact nature and meuning of int~

freedom of information illt By interweaving tlte t

a continuous thread 1 lla lution of the thought para Alan Thring to the artifici Artificial Intelligence Prog and the revolutiollary tech

Page 2: Alan Turing: an Introductory Biographycs.furman.edu/~ktreu/fyw-turing/assign/turing_bio.pdf · Alan Turing: an Introductory Biography . Andrew Hodges Wadharn College, University of

I

4 Andrew Hodges

Turing working alone and only twenty-three attacked and settled this probshylem using his defin ition of computability His famous paper On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidllngsproblem was published at the turn of 1936 - 37 A complete outsider to the fi e ld he won a place in the subject lith a cOllcept which after 60 years remains definiti ve His defini tion of computability showcd there could be no geleral method for deciding the provabili ty of mathematical propositions and ma rked the (lei of attempts to formalize a complete systelll for mathematics But it also opened the way into new fi elds which now wc would recognize as computer science and the cogni ti ve sciences

A lthough Turing thereafter found himself classed as a logician he was more a mathematician who applicd himse lf to logic and mOle than that a scientist who behind the mathematics felt a dcep concelll for the fundamenshytal questions of mind and mattcr His underlying interest ill the problcm of mind showed up in the bold statements about humall lIlell10ry and statcs of m ind which informed his argluueIlts His backgrounci in phys ics was hill ted ect in the machincs with which hc lIlade his clefinition of computability the now-famous Turing machiles l1lnning 011 paper tape an inwge of 1930s modernity It was this concreten(ss which maee Turillgs definition of COlllshyputability much more satisfactory t hall the lllClthell1atical dcfi lli t ioll offered hy Alonzo Church the Princeton logician wlIo lee the fie lcl Matlwlllatically Turings defini t ion WeiS equi valellt to Church Bu t the descriptioll of the Turing machine gave a convincing arglllliell t for why it ovas t hat this mathcshylIlatical ctcfin ition complete ly captured the concept of cffectively calculable

Each Turillg machine rcprescuts all algorithm fo r 1ll0derll reaclcrs it is hard not to see it as a computcr program ane to bc( ill mind that COIllshy

)Juters did not t hen exist But T ur illg specificaly dcfillcd it type of l1lacllillC call ed universal capab le of reae ing the illstlllctioll tablc of allY othelmiddot llWshychine This is precise ly the principle of the stored-progralll digital cOlllPu ter then yet to corne into being It is possible t hat Tmillg evell then clltCltaillecl the poss ibility of constructi llg s Llch a nwchillc for he certaillly illterested himself in elec trical a nd mecllall ical COlllPutation Bllt if so he left 110 notcs 01 observations OIl this ques t ioll Rcither be was pri lllarily engagcd ill i wide variety of mathematical researches In late 1036 Tllling joillcd Cltlllch group at Princeton and there embarked on mOle advanced logic bllt a lso Oil work in a lgebra and on developing thc theory of the Ricmallu zeta-function fllllshydamental to the study of primo llumbers Tlte ll1atiJ(lllatician John von Nellshymann offerecl him a post at Princeton to continue lllltlthelllatical research bnt he chose to return to England in s limmer 1938 consciolls of the impendiug conflict with Germany and already prepared t o ma kc a special contribution to it

Whilst the Seconcl vVorlci vVar took ma ny of ltis scient ific contemporaries into the phys ics of radar a nd the atomic bomb it took Alan Turing into n ypshytology After 1938 his grappling with the illfini tudes of mathcnllt1lical logic

was complemented by the fini of the German Enigma encip brilliant 1 olish contribution r

method of test ing a probabl( logical scheme was rapidly ll1i

vices called Bombes which fro of decipherment throughout t the now famous center at Blet increasingly large sectors of tl Turing remained the chief scie logic of the Bombe lay in Be idence a development close Turing led what was in effect personal cha rge of the crucial approach triumph in the batt the developing course of Lhe N

odds and later as the work t ional scale handing over the was ecl ipsed the United State

Turings personality t raits bridge environment slIy bllt Ot

not well adapted to military I

Anglo-American relaLiollship him the top-level tecliuical lia voyage to America in the wint1 tIe None of this experiellce he from his primary vocatioll as his scientific calling was well i experience For after J943 Tllr scale digital electronic lllachin sible a practical version of his he m ade the constllldion of s arranged his work so as to gail - designing and building an [ of t he Second Worlct War he h mot ivated not by miHtary or ec scope of the compul~Hhle and with human mental processes

For his war work which s Turing was honored with the work remained completely sec vantRge from it in his subsequo pmiod began with grea t prorr Illcnt a t the National PhysicE

5 Introductory Biography

was complemented by the finite but still highly challenging logical problem of the German Enigma enciphering machine In 1939 partly thanks to a brilliant Polish contribution Turing was able to propose a highly ingenious method of testing a probable word for Enigma-enciphered messages His logical scheme was rapidly materialized in very large electromechanical deshyvices called Bombes which from 1940 onwards vvorked as the central engines of decipherment throughout the war For this work Turing was based at the now famous center at Bletchley Park Buckinghamshire which recruited increasingly large sectors of the British intelligentsia Amongst these Alan Turing remained the chief scientific figure His central contribution after the logic of the Bombe lay in Bayesian statistics for measuring weight of evshyidence a development close to Shannons theory of information measure Turing led what was in effect a scientific revolution and because he took personal charge of the crucial U-boat message problem was able to see his approach triumph in the battle of the Atlantic Alan Turings role mirrored the developing course of the war at first a lone British fi gure against all the odds and la ter as the work developed on a major industrial and transnashytional scale handing over tl1e British cOlltribution to the power by which it was eclipsed the United States

Turing S personality traits became more striking when outside the Camshybridge environment shy but outspoken nervous but lacking deference he was lIot well adapted to military manners or to the diplomacy of the embryonic Anglo-American rela tionship But his commanding scientific authority made him the top-level technical liaison between the wartime Allies demanding a voyage to America in the winter of 1942-43 at the height of the Atlantic ba tshylIe None of this experience however gave him a taste for power or detracted from his primary vocation as a pure scientist The undiminished tenacity of his scientific calling was well illustrated by the lise he made of his wartime experience For after 1943 Thring knew from Bletchley Park work that largeshyscale digital electronic machinery had the speed and reliability to make posshysible a practical version of his uni versal machine F01l1 that point onwards he made the construction of such a machine his prillcipal ambition and he arranged his work so as to gain persona experiell(( of electronic components - designing and building an advanced speech scrambler And so at the end of the Second iIorld War he had a plan for an electronic computer but it was motivated not by military or economic needs It was for the exploration of the scope of the computable and in particular for comparing machine processes with huma n mental processes He called it building a brain

For his war work which some would judge critical to the Atlantic war Thring was honored with the modest British formality of an OBE But his work remained completely secret until the mid-1970s and he derived no adshyvantage from it in his subsequent scientific career Nevertheless the post-war period began with great promise for he was invited to take up an appointshyment at the National Physical Laboratory near London in October 1945

i

i

6 Andrew Hodges

and his electronic computer plan the proposal for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was swiftly adopted in IvIarch 1946

At that time which was before the word computer had its modern meanshying Turing l -ed the term Pract ical Universal Computing Ivlachine But alshythough fond of the word practical Turing did not have the human gift of gett ing his practical way with people and institutions who did not share his vishysion From t he outset it became clear that the NPL had no clear idea on how it was to build the machine he had designed and it failed to adopt a policy speedy enough to satisfy Alan Turing Turings plans for software exploiting the universality of the machine were t he strongest feature of his proposaJ but they were li ttle developed or publicized because of the dominat ing problem of hardware engineering Impatient fol progress Turing took up marathon running to near-Olympic standard but this did not relieve the stress In the au tumn of 1947 he returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year and while there was approached by Max Newma n since 1945 professor of rnathematshyics a t Manchester Uniwrsity to take an appointment there instead Newman had played a most important part at Bletchley Park after 1942 and had orgashynized a section using the most sophisticated electronic machinery he was also fu lly acquainted with Turings logical ideas At Manchester he had rapidly recru ited both Royal Society funding and top-rank engineers and by June 1948 a tiny version of the universal machine principle was working there shyin marked contrast to the lack of progress at the NPL Turing accepted the appointment as Deputy Director of the Computing Laboratory But a lready in 1948 it became clear that the engineering would dominate the Manchester environment and before long both lewman and Turing were sidelined and did not direct anything at a ll

Turings programming never exploited the advanced possibilities he had mapped out in 1946 and he failed also to write the papers that could have esshytablished his claim to the theory and practice of modern computing Instead the main theme of his work became the more futuristic prospect of Artificial Intelligence or intelligent machinery as he called it Already prefigured in 1946 this was expounded in papers of 1947 1948 and 1950 arguing strongly that computable operations could encompass far more than those things conshysidered merely mechanical in common parlance and indeed cou ld emulate human in telligence The last of these papers the only one to be published in his lifetime appearing in the philosophy journa l lVI ind has become famo us for the Turing Test and its 50 prophecy and stands still as a fl agship for confidence in the ultimate mechanizabi lity of JVIind But Turings construcshytive arguments for how Artificial Intelligence might be achieved are perhaps as significant as the long-term vision Notably his ideas encompassed both the top-down and the bottom-up ideas that were to become bitter rivals in later AI research But it is also notable that he did very li ttle to follow up these ideas with active research even when he had the resources of the Manchester computer

In 1951 Turing was cl citation referring to his 193 though he had largely fai led his wartime achievement 11 strating the part he could mathematics tha t began ill a mathematical explanatiO interest in biology that wen in advanced methods for stl the computer simulat ions computer

At the end of 1951 TUl for mathematical biology VI

for logic But at just this P he was always in danger f homosexual act ivity all ill The trial in March U)52 r oestrogen He fought hard tant open and unashamed at Manches ter In 195l the well have been related to til new category of security r work he had previously bee wou ld not have Call1l( ~d the story however Turillg also in his morphogenetic thmr of the quantum mechauics however cut off by his deat Cheshire in 1954 by 1ll()(lU

wished to do so to believe

An awkward figurc wb Turing was wrapped up ir intense personal intcgrity of science but his large cal of the Turing Test setl ing cheekier side of En)lih ell

he of a1l people original an advocate of the view thaL t

scientific in spiri t his apr perhaps any other inclividl found his life enveloped by

The strange drama of A a lasting life in public com enigma but so too cloes the

7 Introductory Biography

In 1951 TUring was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society the citation referring to his 1936 work This was a wat ~rs hed year for Turing alshythough he had largely failed in the immed iate post-war period to capitalize on his wartime achievement he now started a quite fresh development demonshystrating the part he could still have in the great expansion of science and mathematics that began in the 1950s His new ambition was that of giving a mathematical explanation for morphogenetic phenomena thus showing an interest in biology that went back to ch ildhood but which was now expressed in advanced methods for studying nonlinear partial difrerential equations with the computer simulations which had just become possible on the Ivlanchester computer

At the end of 1951 Turing submitted a first paper on this work which for mathematical biology was to be as important a hi 1936 work had been for logic But at just this point Alan Turing was arrestee A a homoexual he was always in danger from the law which at that time criminali zee all homosexual activity an injudicious liaison turned that potentia into fact The trial in March 1952 resulted in his being forced to accept injection of oestrogen He fought hard to prevent thi from arreting his work Unrepenshytant open and unashamed Alan Turing found himself a very isolated figure at Manchester In 1953 there was another crisis with the police which may vell have been related to the fact thai as a known homosexua he fell into the new category of security risk one who could no longer continue the secret work he hac previously been doing His holiday abroad to less hostile clime would not have calmed the nerves of security officer Amidst this Cold Var story however Turing also found time not only for substantial developments in hi morphogenetic theory but for a stab at a new field the interpretation of the quantum mechanics that had first absorbed him in youth All this was however cut oH by his death by cyanide poisoning at his home at Vilmslow Cheshire in 1954 by means mot likely contrived by him to allow those who wished to do so to believe it an accident

An awkward figure who delighted yet often infurin tfd hi friends Alan Turing was wrapped up in world events and yet most concerned with an intense personal integrity Writing as plainly as he spoke he was an Orwell of science but his large capacity for frivolity as illustrated in hi discussion of the 1lring Test set ting gave him an honorable place ill the lighter and cheekier side of English culture His life was full of paradox not least that he of all people original and socially nonconforming should be the foremost advocate of the view that the mind was purely mechanical The most purely scienti fic in spirit his application to war work was of greater effect than perhaps any other individual scientist Committed to honesty and truth he found his life enveloped by secrecy and silence

The strange drama of Alan Turings death in 1954 has ill its way given him a lasting life in public consciousness His s tate of mind at death remains an enigma but so too does the true inner story of his life Prickly and proud yet

8 Andrew Hodges

self-effacing Thring wrote little about the development of his ideas There is the unknown background to his fascination ~ h the problem of Mind where only juvenile fragments survive There is t he question ra ised by Newman of whether he might have done greater things in mathemat ics bu t for the war and the ques tion of the real motiva tions for Turings aba ndonment of deep mathematical work for the sake of the war The vexed ques tion of the emergence of the digi tal co mputer in 1945 and of Thrings relationship with von Neuma nn remains a gap at the heart of 20 th -century t echnology The true genesis of his Artificial Intelligence program during the war and the question of whether his concern for the significance of Codels theorem was really resolved - all this remains unknown spur to 21st-century thought and our fascination with the theory and practice of intelligent life

References

1 Agar J (2001) Turing and the Unive rsal fvIachine (Cambridge Icon) 2 Dav is vI (2000) Tire Universal Computer (New York orton) 3 Hodges A (1983) Alan Turing the enigma (Burnett London Simon amp Schusshy

ter New York new editions Vintage London 1992 Walker New York 2000) Further materia l is on http www turing org uk

4 Hodges A (1997 ) Turing a natura l philosopher (Phoenix London ROulI(dge New York 1999) Included in T he Great Philoso phers ed~ R Monk and F Raphael (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2000)

5 Holtigc~ A (2002) Ala n M Turing in E N Za lta (ed) Stallford E ncyclopedia of Philosophy httpplato stanford edu

6 Newman Iv H A (1033) Ala n JVI Turing Biographical memoirs of the Royal Society 253

7 Turing A JV (19922001) Co llected Works eds J L Britton R O Gandy D C Ince P T Saunders C E 111 Yates (Amsterdam North-Holland )

8 Turing E S (1959) Alan td Turing (Cambridge IldltT) 9 The Turing Digita l Archive a t http www turingarchive org offrs an onshy

line version of the Turing archive of papers a t Ki ngs College Cambridc

Alans Apple

Valeria Patera

TIMOS Tcatro Event Associ

Summary A play by Valeri

1 The Authors ViE

My study 011 Alan Turin~ eticphilosophical approacb from the various papers prf

My aim was not to prOt rather to create a theatrical spatial and temporal conte] on a virtual plallc iudivid outsiders

Thus stylized moments modern t ragedy hut with clt of this eminent Illathenwtilt power and his disarming hlt adventures of two yOllng pl surfing the Net

The Thring Test is reill anism a deus cx machinH t

cyber culture created by till in Bletchley Park duriug tlH father of the modern hacklt than anyt hing else emhodi( able invention the computE computer has qlJ(~stiol1ed a

of Western cult urp ill fact nature and meuning of int~

freedom of information illt By interweaving tlte t

a continuous thread 1 lla lution of the thought para Alan Thring to the artifici Artificial Intelligence Prog and the revolutiollary tech

Page 3: Alan Turing: an Introductory Biographycs.furman.edu/~ktreu/fyw-turing/assign/turing_bio.pdf · Alan Turing: an Introductory Biography . Andrew Hodges Wadharn College, University of

5 Introductory Biography

was complemented by the finite but still highly challenging logical problem of the German Enigma enciphering machine In 1939 partly thanks to a brilliant Polish contribution Turing was able to propose a highly ingenious method of testing a probable word for Enigma-enciphered messages His logical scheme was rapidly materialized in very large electromechanical deshyvices called Bombes which from 1940 onwards vvorked as the central engines of decipherment throughout the war For this work Turing was based at the now famous center at Bletchley Park Buckinghamshire which recruited increasingly large sectors of the British intelligentsia Amongst these Alan Turing remained the chief scientific figure His central contribution after the logic of the Bombe lay in Bayesian statistics for measuring weight of evshyidence a development close to Shannons theory of information measure Turing led what was in effect a scientific revolution and because he took personal charge of the crucial U-boat message problem was able to see his approach triumph in the battle of the Atlantic Alan Turings role mirrored the developing course of the war at first a lone British fi gure against all the odds and la ter as the work developed on a major industrial and transnashytional scale handing over tl1e British cOlltribution to the power by which it was eclipsed the United States

Turing S personality traits became more striking when outside the Camshybridge environment shy but outspoken nervous but lacking deference he was lIot well adapted to military manners or to the diplomacy of the embryonic Anglo-American rela tionship But his commanding scientific authority made him the top-level technical liaison between the wartime Allies demanding a voyage to America in the winter of 1942-43 at the height of the Atlantic ba tshylIe None of this experience however gave him a taste for power or detracted from his primary vocation as a pure scientist The undiminished tenacity of his scientific calling was well illustrated by the lise he made of his wartime experience For after 1943 Thring knew from Bletchley Park work that largeshyscale digital electronic machinery had the speed and reliability to make posshysible a practical version of his uni versal machine F01l1 that point onwards he made the construction of such a machine his prillcipal ambition and he arranged his work so as to gain persona experiell(( of electronic components - designing and building an advanced speech scrambler And so at the end of the Second iIorld War he had a plan for an electronic computer but it was motivated not by military or economic needs It was for the exploration of the scope of the computable and in particular for comparing machine processes with huma n mental processes He called it building a brain

For his war work which some would judge critical to the Atlantic war Thring was honored with the modest British formality of an OBE But his work remained completely secret until the mid-1970s and he derived no adshyvantage from it in his subsequent scientific career Nevertheless the post-war period began with great promise for he was invited to take up an appointshyment at the National Physical Laboratory near London in October 1945

i

i

6 Andrew Hodges

and his electronic computer plan the proposal for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was swiftly adopted in IvIarch 1946

At that time which was before the word computer had its modern meanshying Turing l -ed the term Pract ical Universal Computing Ivlachine But alshythough fond of the word practical Turing did not have the human gift of gett ing his practical way with people and institutions who did not share his vishysion From t he outset it became clear that the NPL had no clear idea on how it was to build the machine he had designed and it failed to adopt a policy speedy enough to satisfy Alan Turing Turings plans for software exploiting the universality of the machine were t he strongest feature of his proposaJ but they were li ttle developed or publicized because of the dominat ing problem of hardware engineering Impatient fol progress Turing took up marathon running to near-Olympic standard but this did not relieve the stress In the au tumn of 1947 he returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year and while there was approached by Max Newma n since 1945 professor of rnathematshyics a t Manchester Uniwrsity to take an appointment there instead Newman had played a most important part at Bletchley Park after 1942 and had orgashynized a section using the most sophisticated electronic machinery he was also fu lly acquainted with Turings logical ideas At Manchester he had rapidly recru ited both Royal Society funding and top-rank engineers and by June 1948 a tiny version of the universal machine principle was working there shyin marked contrast to the lack of progress at the NPL Turing accepted the appointment as Deputy Director of the Computing Laboratory But a lready in 1948 it became clear that the engineering would dominate the Manchester environment and before long both lewman and Turing were sidelined and did not direct anything at a ll

Turings programming never exploited the advanced possibilities he had mapped out in 1946 and he failed also to write the papers that could have esshytablished his claim to the theory and practice of modern computing Instead the main theme of his work became the more futuristic prospect of Artificial Intelligence or intelligent machinery as he called it Already prefigured in 1946 this was expounded in papers of 1947 1948 and 1950 arguing strongly that computable operations could encompass far more than those things conshysidered merely mechanical in common parlance and indeed cou ld emulate human in telligence The last of these papers the only one to be published in his lifetime appearing in the philosophy journa l lVI ind has become famo us for the Turing Test and its 50 prophecy and stands still as a fl agship for confidence in the ultimate mechanizabi lity of JVIind But Turings construcshytive arguments for how Artificial Intelligence might be achieved are perhaps as significant as the long-term vision Notably his ideas encompassed both the top-down and the bottom-up ideas that were to become bitter rivals in later AI research But it is also notable that he did very li ttle to follow up these ideas with active research even when he had the resources of the Manchester computer

In 1951 Turing was cl citation referring to his 193 though he had largely fai led his wartime achievement 11 strating the part he could mathematics tha t began ill a mathematical explanatiO interest in biology that wen in advanced methods for stl the computer simulat ions computer

At the end of 1951 TUl for mathematical biology VI

for logic But at just this P he was always in danger f homosexual act ivity all ill The trial in March U)52 r oestrogen He fought hard tant open and unashamed at Manches ter In 195l the well have been related to til new category of security r work he had previously bee wou ld not have Call1l( ~d the story however Turillg also in his morphogenetic thmr of the quantum mechauics however cut off by his deat Cheshire in 1954 by 1ll()(lU

wished to do so to believe

An awkward figurc wb Turing was wrapped up ir intense personal intcgrity of science but his large cal of the Turing Test setl ing cheekier side of En)lih ell

he of a1l people original an advocate of the view thaL t

scientific in spiri t his apr perhaps any other inclividl found his life enveloped by

The strange drama of A a lasting life in public com enigma but so too cloes the

7 Introductory Biography

In 1951 TUring was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society the citation referring to his 1936 work This was a wat ~rs hed year for Turing alshythough he had largely failed in the immed iate post-war period to capitalize on his wartime achievement he now started a quite fresh development demonshystrating the part he could still have in the great expansion of science and mathematics that began in the 1950s His new ambition was that of giving a mathematical explanation for morphogenetic phenomena thus showing an interest in biology that went back to ch ildhood but which was now expressed in advanced methods for studying nonlinear partial difrerential equations with the computer simulations which had just become possible on the Ivlanchester computer

At the end of 1951 Turing submitted a first paper on this work which for mathematical biology was to be as important a hi 1936 work had been for logic But at just this point Alan Turing was arrestee A a homoexual he was always in danger from the law which at that time criminali zee all homosexual activity an injudicious liaison turned that potentia into fact The trial in March 1952 resulted in his being forced to accept injection of oestrogen He fought hard to prevent thi from arreting his work Unrepenshytant open and unashamed Alan Turing found himself a very isolated figure at Manchester In 1953 there was another crisis with the police which may vell have been related to the fact thai as a known homosexua he fell into the new category of security risk one who could no longer continue the secret work he hac previously been doing His holiday abroad to less hostile clime would not have calmed the nerves of security officer Amidst this Cold Var story however Turing also found time not only for substantial developments in hi morphogenetic theory but for a stab at a new field the interpretation of the quantum mechanics that had first absorbed him in youth All this was however cut oH by his death by cyanide poisoning at his home at Vilmslow Cheshire in 1954 by means mot likely contrived by him to allow those who wished to do so to believe it an accident

An awkward figure who delighted yet often infurin tfd hi friends Alan Turing was wrapped up in world events and yet most concerned with an intense personal integrity Writing as plainly as he spoke he was an Orwell of science but his large capacity for frivolity as illustrated in hi discussion of the 1lring Test set ting gave him an honorable place ill the lighter and cheekier side of English culture His life was full of paradox not least that he of all people original and socially nonconforming should be the foremost advocate of the view that the mind was purely mechanical The most purely scienti fic in spirit his application to war work was of greater effect than perhaps any other individual scientist Committed to honesty and truth he found his life enveloped by secrecy and silence

The strange drama of Alan Turings death in 1954 has ill its way given him a lasting life in public consciousness His s tate of mind at death remains an enigma but so too does the true inner story of his life Prickly and proud yet

8 Andrew Hodges

self-effacing Thring wrote little about the development of his ideas There is the unknown background to his fascination ~ h the problem of Mind where only juvenile fragments survive There is t he question ra ised by Newman of whether he might have done greater things in mathemat ics bu t for the war and the ques tion of the real motiva tions for Turings aba ndonment of deep mathematical work for the sake of the war The vexed ques tion of the emergence of the digi tal co mputer in 1945 and of Thrings relationship with von Neuma nn remains a gap at the heart of 20 th -century t echnology The true genesis of his Artificial Intelligence program during the war and the question of whether his concern for the significance of Codels theorem was really resolved - all this remains unknown spur to 21st-century thought and our fascination with the theory and practice of intelligent life

References

1 Agar J (2001) Turing and the Unive rsal fvIachine (Cambridge Icon) 2 Dav is vI (2000) Tire Universal Computer (New York orton) 3 Hodges A (1983) Alan Turing the enigma (Burnett London Simon amp Schusshy

ter New York new editions Vintage London 1992 Walker New York 2000) Further materia l is on http www turing org uk

4 Hodges A (1997 ) Turing a natura l philosopher (Phoenix London ROulI(dge New York 1999) Included in T he Great Philoso phers ed~ R Monk and F Raphael (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2000)

5 Holtigc~ A (2002) Ala n M Turing in E N Za lta (ed) Stallford E ncyclopedia of Philosophy httpplato stanford edu

6 Newman Iv H A (1033) Ala n JVI Turing Biographical memoirs of the Royal Society 253

7 Turing A JV (19922001) Co llected Works eds J L Britton R O Gandy D C Ince P T Saunders C E 111 Yates (Amsterdam North-Holland )

8 Turing E S (1959) Alan td Turing (Cambridge IldltT) 9 The Turing Digita l Archive a t http www turingarchive org offrs an onshy

line version of the Turing archive of papers a t Ki ngs College Cambridc

Alans Apple

Valeria Patera

TIMOS Tcatro Event Associ

Summary A play by Valeri

1 The Authors ViE

My study 011 Alan Turin~ eticphilosophical approacb from the various papers prf

My aim was not to prOt rather to create a theatrical spatial and temporal conte] on a virtual plallc iudivid outsiders

Thus stylized moments modern t ragedy hut with clt of this eminent Illathenwtilt power and his disarming hlt adventures of two yOllng pl surfing the Net

The Thring Test is reill anism a deus cx machinH t

cyber culture created by till in Bletchley Park duriug tlH father of the modern hacklt than anyt hing else emhodi( able invention the computE computer has qlJ(~stiol1ed a

of Western cult urp ill fact nature and meuning of int~

freedom of information illt By interweaving tlte t

a continuous thread 1 lla lution of the thought para Alan Thring to the artifici Artificial Intelligence Prog and the revolutiollary tech

Page 4: Alan Turing: an Introductory Biographycs.furman.edu/~ktreu/fyw-turing/assign/turing_bio.pdf · Alan Turing: an Introductory Biography . Andrew Hodges Wadharn College, University of

i

i

6 Andrew Hodges

and his electronic computer plan the proposal for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was swiftly adopted in IvIarch 1946

At that time which was before the word computer had its modern meanshying Turing l -ed the term Pract ical Universal Computing Ivlachine But alshythough fond of the word practical Turing did not have the human gift of gett ing his practical way with people and institutions who did not share his vishysion From t he outset it became clear that the NPL had no clear idea on how it was to build the machine he had designed and it failed to adopt a policy speedy enough to satisfy Alan Turing Turings plans for software exploiting the universality of the machine were t he strongest feature of his proposaJ but they were li ttle developed or publicized because of the dominat ing problem of hardware engineering Impatient fol progress Turing took up marathon running to near-Olympic standard but this did not relieve the stress In the au tumn of 1947 he returned to Cambridge for a sabbatical year and while there was approached by Max Newma n since 1945 professor of rnathematshyics a t Manchester Uniwrsity to take an appointment there instead Newman had played a most important part at Bletchley Park after 1942 and had orgashynized a section using the most sophisticated electronic machinery he was also fu lly acquainted with Turings logical ideas At Manchester he had rapidly recru ited both Royal Society funding and top-rank engineers and by June 1948 a tiny version of the universal machine principle was working there shyin marked contrast to the lack of progress at the NPL Turing accepted the appointment as Deputy Director of the Computing Laboratory But a lready in 1948 it became clear that the engineering would dominate the Manchester environment and before long both lewman and Turing were sidelined and did not direct anything at a ll

Turings programming never exploited the advanced possibilities he had mapped out in 1946 and he failed also to write the papers that could have esshytablished his claim to the theory and practice of modern computing Instead the main theme of his work became the more futuristic prospect of Artificial Intelligence or intelligent machinery as he called it Already prefigured in 1946 this was expounded in papers of 1947 1948 and 1950 arguing strongly that computable operations could encompass far more than those things conshysidered merely mechanical in common parlance and indeed cou ld emulate human in telligence The last of these papers the only one to be published in his lifetime appearing in the philosophy journa l lVI ind has become famo us for the Turing Test and its 50 prophecy and stands still as a fl agship for confidence in the ultimate mechanizabi lity of JVIind But Turings construcshytive arguments for how Artificial Intelligence might be achieved are perhaps as significant as the long-term vision Notably his ideas encompassed both the top-down and the bottom-up ideas that were to become bitter rivals in later AI research But it is also notable that he did very li ttle to follow up these ideas with active research even when he had the resources of the Manchester computer

In 1951 Turing was cl citation referring to his 193 though he had largely fai led his wartime achievement 11 strating the part he could mathematics tha t began ill a mathematical explanatiO interest in biology that wen in advanced methods for stl the computer simulat ions computer

At the end of 1951 TUl for mathematical biology VI

for logic But at just this P he was always in danger f homosexual act ivity all ill The trial in March U)52 r oestrogen He fought hard tant open and unashamed at Manches ter In 195l the well have been related to til new category of security r work he had previously bee wou ld not have Call1l( ~d the story however Turillg also in his morphogenetic thmr of the quantum mechauics however cut off by his deat Cheshire in 1954 by 1ll()(lU

wished to do so to believe

An awkward figurc wb Turing was wrapped up ir intense personal intcgrity of science but his large cal of the Turing Test setl ing cheekier side of En)lih ell

he of a1l people original an advocate of the view thaL t

scientific in spiri t his apr perhaps any other inclividl found his life enveloped by

The strange drama of A a lasting life in public com enigma but so too cloes the

7 Introductory Biography

In 1951 TUring was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society the citation referring to his 1936 work This was a wat ~rs hed year for Turing alshythough he had largely failed in the immed iate post-war period to capitalize on his wartime achievement he now started a quite fresh development demonshystrating the part he could still have in the great expansion of science and mathematics that began in the 1950s His new ambition was that of giving a mathematical explanation for morphogenetic phenomena thus showing an interest in biology that went back to ch ildhood but which was now expressed in advanced methods for studying nonlinear partial difrerential equations with the computer simulations which had just become possible on the Ivlanchester computer

At the end of 1951 Turing submitted a first paper on this work which for mathematical biology was to be as important a hi 1936 work had been for logic But at just this point Alan Turing was arrestee A a homoexual he was always in danger from the law which at that time criminali zee all homosexual activity an injudicious liaison turned that potentia into fact The trial in March 1952 resulted in his being forced to accept injection of oestrogen He fought hard to prevent thi from arreting his work Unrepenshytant open and unashamed Alan Turing found himself a very isolated figure at Manchester In 1953 there was another crisis with the police which may vell have been related to the fact thai as a known homosexua he fell into the new category of security risk one who could no longer continue the secret work he hac previously been doing His holiday abroad to less hostile clime would not have calmed the nerves of security officer Amidst this Cold Var story however Turing also found time not only for substantial developments in hi morphogenetic theory but for a stab at a new field the interpretation of the quantum mechanics that had first absorbed him in youth All this was however cut oH by his death by cyanide poisoning at his home at Vilmslow Cheshire in 1954 by means mot likely contrived by him to allow those who wished to do so to believe it an accident

An awkward figure who delighted yet often infurin tfd hi friends Alan Turing was wrapped up in world events and yet most concerned with an intense personal integrity Writing as plainly as he spoke he was an Orwell of science but his large capacity for frivolity as illustrated in hi discussion of the 1lring Test set ting gave him an honorable place ill the lighter and cheekier side of English culture His life was full of paradox not least that he of all people original and socially nonconforming should be the foremost advocate of the view that the mind was purely mechanical The most purely scienti fic in spirit his application to war work was of greater effect than perhaps any other individual scientist Committed to honesty and truth he found his life enveloped by secrecy and silence

The strange drama of Alan Turings death in 1954 has ill its way given him a lasting life in public consciousness His s tate of mind at death remains an enigma but so too does the true inner story of his life Prickly and proud yet

8 Andrew Hodges

self-effacing Thring wrote little about the development of his ideas There is the unknown background to his fascination ~ h the problem of Mind where only juvenile fragments survive There is t he question ra ised by Newman of whether he might have done greater things in mathemat ics bu t for the war and the ques tion of the real motiva tions for Turings aba ndonment of deep mathematical work for the sake of the war The vexed ques tion of the emergence of the digi tal co mputer in 1945 and of Thrings relationship with von Neuma nn remains a gap at the heart of 20 th -century t echnology The true genesis of his Artificial Intelligence program during the war and the question of whether his concern for the significance of Codels theorem was really resolved - all this remains unknown spur to 21st-century thought and our fascination with the theory and practice of intelligent life

References

1 Agar J (2001) Turing and the Unive rsal fvIachine (Cambridge Icon) 2 Dav is vI (2000) Tire Universal Computer (New York orton) 3 Hodges A (1983) Alan Turing the enigma (Burnett London Simon amp Schusshy

ter New York new editions Vintage London 1992 Walker New York 2000) Further materia l is on http www turing org uk

4 Hodges A (1997 ) Turing a natura l philosopher (Phoenix London ROulI(dge New York 1999) Included in T he Great Philoso phers ed~ R Monk and F Raphael (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2000)

5 Holtigc~ A (2002) Ala n M Turing in E N Za lta (ed) Stallford E ncyclopedia of Philosophy httpplato stanford edu

6 Newman Iv H A (1033) Ala n JVI Turing Biographical memoirs of the Royal Society 253

7 Turing A JV (19922001) Co llected Works eds J L Britton R O Gandy D C Ince P T Saunders C E 111 Yates (Amsterdam North-Holland )

8 Turing E S (1959) Alan td Turing (Cambridge IldltT) 9 The Turing Digita l Archive a t http www turingarchive org offrs an onshy

line version of the Turing archive of papers a t Ki ngs College Cambridc

Alans Apple

Valeria Patera

TIMOS Tcatro Event Associ

Summary A play by Valeri

1 The Authors ViE

My study 011 Alan Turin~ eticphilosophical approacb from the various papers prf

My aim was not to prOt rather to create a theatrical spatial and temporal conte] on a virtual plallc iudivid outsiders

Thus stylized moments modern t ragedy hut with clt of this eminent Illathenwtilt power and his disarming hlt adventures of two yOllng pl surfing the Net

The Thring Test is reill anism a deus cx machinH t

cyber culture created by till in Bletchley Park duriug tlH father of the modern hacklt than anyt hing else emhodi( able invention the computE computer has qlJ(~stiol1ed a

of Western cult urp ill fact nature and meuning of int~

freedom of information illt By interweaving tlte t

a continuous thread 1 lla lution of the thought para Alan Thring to the artifici Artificial Intelligence Prog and the revolutiollary tech

Page 5: Alan Turing: an Introductory Biographycs.furman.edu/~ktreu/fyw-turing/assign/turing_bio.pdf · Alan Turing: an Introductory Biography . Andrew Hodges Wadharn College, University of

7 Introductory Biography

In 1951 TUring was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society the citation referring to his 1936 work This was a wat ~rs hed year for Turing alshythough he had largely failed in the immed iate post-war period to capitalize on his wartime achievement he now started a quite fresh development demonshystrating the part he could still have in the great expansion of science and mathematics that began in the 1950s His new ambition was that of giving a mathematical explanation for morphogenetic phenomena thus showing an interest in biology that went back to ch ildhood but which was now expressed in advanced methods for studying nonlinear partial difrerential equations with the computer simulations which had just become possible on the Ivlanchester computer

At the end of 1951 Turing submitted a first paper on this work which for mathematical biology was to be as important a hi 1936 work had been for logic But at just this point Alan Turing was arrestee A a homoexual he was always in danger from the law which at that time criminali zee all homosexual activity an injudicious liaison turned that potentia into fact The trial in March 1952 resulted in his being forced to accept injection of oestrogen He fought hard to prevent thi from arreting his work Unrepenshytant open and unashamed Alan Turing found himself a very isolated figure at Manchester In 1953 there was another crisis with the police which may vell have been related to the fact thai as a known homosexua he fell into the new category of security risk one who could no longer continue the secret work he hac previously been doing His holiday abroad to less hostile clime would not have calmed the nerves of security officer Amidst this Cold Var story however Turing also found time not only for substantial developments in hi morphogenetic theory but for a stab at a new field the interpretation of the quantum mechanics that had first absorbed him in youth All this was however cut oH by his death by cyanide poisoning at his home at Vilmslow Cheshire in 1954 by means mot likely contrived by him to allow those who wished to do so to believe it an accident

An awkward figure who delighted yet often infurin tfd hi friends Alan Turing was wrapped up in world events and yet most concerned with an intense personal integrity Writing as plainly as he spoke he was an Orwell of science but his large capacity for frivolity as illustrated in hi discussion of the 1lring Test set ting gave him an honorable place ill the lighter and cheekier side of English culture His life was full of paradox not least that he of all people original and socially nonconforming should be the foremost advocate of the view that the mind was purely mechanical The most purely scienti fic in spirit his application to war work was of greater effect than perhaps any other individual scientist Committed to honesty and truth he found his life enveloped by secrecy and silence

The strange drama of Alan Turings death in 1954 has ill its way given him a lasting life in public consciousness His s tate of mind at death remains an enigma but so too does the true inner story of his life Prickly and proud yet

8 Andrew Hodges

self-effacing Thring wrote little about the development of his ideas There is the unknown background to his fascination ~ h the problem of Mind where only juvenile fragments survive There is t he question ra ised by Newman of whether he might have done greater things in mathemat ics bu t for the war and the ques tion of the real motiva tions for Turings aba ndonment of deep mathematical work for the sake of the war The vexed ques tion of the emergence of the digi tal co mputer in 1945 and of Thrings relationship with von Neuma nn remains a gap at the heart of 20 th -century t echnology The true genesis of his Artificial Intelligence program during the war and the question of whether his concern for the significance of Codels theorem was really resolved - all this remains unknown spur to 21st-century thought and our fascination with the theory and practice of intelligent life

References

1 Agar J (2001) Turing and the Unive rsal fvIachine (Cambridge Icon) 2 Dav is vI (2000) Tire Universal Computer (New York orton) 3 Hodges A (1983) Alan Turing the enigma (Burnett London Simon amp Schusshy

ter New York new editions Vintage London 1992 Walker New York 2000) Further materia l is on http www turing org uk

4 Hodges A (1997 ) Turing a natura l philosopher (Phoenix London ROulI(dge New York 1999) Included in T he Great Philoso phers ed~ R Monk and F Raphael (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2000)

5 Holtigc~ A (2002) Ala n M Turing in E N Za lta (ed) Stallford E ncyclopedia of Philosophy httpplato stanford edu

6 Newman Iv H A (1033) Ala n JVI Turing Biographical memoirs of the Royal Society 253

7 Turing A JV (19922001) Co llected Works eds J L Britton R O Gandy D C Ince P T Saunders C E 111 Yates (Amsterdam North-Holland )

8 Turing E S (1959) Alan td Turing (Cambridge IldltT) 9 The Turing Digita l Archive a t http www turingarchive org offrs an onshy

line version of the Turing archive of papers a t Ki ngs College Cambridc

Alans Apple

Valeria Patera

TIMOS Tcatro Event Associ

Summary A play by Valeri

1 The Authors ViE

My study 011 Alan Turin~ eticphilosophical approacb from the various papers prf

My aim was not to prOt rather to create a theatrical spatial and temporal conte] on a virtual plallc iudivid outsiders

Thus stylized moments modern t ragedy hut with clt of this eminent Illathenwtilt power and his disarming hlt adventures of two yOllng pl surfing the Net

The Thring Test is reill anism a deus cx machinH t

cyber culture created by till in Bletchley Park duriug tlH father of the modern hacklt than anyt hing else emhodi( able invention the computE computer has qlJ(~stiol1ed a

of Western cult urp ill fact nature and meuning of int~

freedom of information illt By interweaving tlte t

a continuous thread 1 lla lution of the thought para Alan Thring to the artifici Artificial Intelligence Prog and the revolutiollary tech

Page 6: Alan Turing: an Introductory Biographycs.furman.edu/~ktreu/fyw-turing/assign/turing_bio.pdf · Alan Turing: an Introductory Biography . Andrew Hodges Wadharn College, University of

8 Andrew Hodges

self-effacing Thring wrote little about the development of his ideas There is the unknown background to his fascination ~ h the problem of Mind where only juvenile fragments survive There is t he question ra ised by Newman of whether he might have done greater things in mathemat ics bu t for the war and the ques tion of the real motiva tions for Turings aba ndonment of deep mathematical work for the sake of the war The vexed ques tion of the emergence of the digi tal co mputer in 1945 and of Thrings relationship with von Neuma nn remains a gap at the heart of 20 th -century t echnology The true genesis of his Artificial Intelligence program during the war and the question of whether his concern for the significance of Codels theorem was really resolved - all this remains unknown spur to 21st-century thought and our fascination with the theory and practice of intelligent life

References

1 Agar J (2001) Turing and the Unive rsal fvIachine (Cambridge Icon) 2 Dav is vI (2000) Tire Universal Computer (New York orton) 3 Hodges A (1983) Alan Turing the enigma (Burnett London Simon amp Schusshy

ter New York new editions Vintage London 1992 Walker New York 2000) Further materia l is on http www turing org uk

4 Hodges A (1997 ) Turing a natura l philosopher (Phoenix London ROulI(dge New York 1999) Included in T he Great Philoso phers ed~ R Monk and F Raphael (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2000)

5 Holtigc~ A (2002) Ala n M Turing in E N Za lta (ed) Stallford E ncyclopedia of Philosophy httpplato stanford edu

6 Newman Iv H A (1033) Ala n JVI Turing Biographical memoirs of the Royal Society 253

7 Turing A JV (19922001) Co llected Works eds J L Britton R O Gandy D C Ince P T Saunders C E 111 Yates (Amsterdam North-Holland )

8 Turing E S (1959) Alan td Turing (Cambridge IldltT) 9 The Turing Digita l Archive a t http www turingarchive org offrs an onshy

line version of the Turing archive of papers a t Ki ngs College Cambridc

Alans Apple

Valeria Patera

TIMOS Tcatro Event Associ

Summary A play by Valeri

1 The Authors ViE

My study 011 Alan Turin~ eticphilosophical approacb from the various papers prf

My aim was not to prOt rather to create a theatrical spatial and temporal conte] on a virtual plallc iudivid outsiders

Thus stylized moments modern t ragedy hut with clt of this eminent Illathenwtilt power and his disarming hlt adventures of two yOllng pl surfing the Net

The Thring Test is reill anism a deus cx machinH t

cyber culture created by till in Bletchley Park duriug tlH father of the modern hacklt than anyt hing else emhodi( able invention the computE computer has qlJ(~stiol1ed a

of Western cult urp ill fact nature and meuning of int~

freedom of information illt By interweaving tlte t

a continuous thread 1 lla lution of the thought para Alan Thring to the artifici Artificial Intelligence Prog and the revolutiollary tech