ALAN TURING LOVE OF CIPHERS AND MATHEMATICS
Just a quick start have you ever wondered that our communications can be intercepted and listened to by someone. what if I say yes would you believe. If you didn't then you are going to because the man we are gonna talk about once deciphered the coded intercepted communications of Germans which indeed helped them to win the second world war.
Early life
Alan Mathison Turing known as Alan Turing was born on 23 June 1912 in Maida Vale, London. He was brought up by a highly sophisticated family. Turing had an elder brother and his father worked as a civil servant in Madras, India. Before his birth, Turing's family lived in India but they always wanted their children to be raised in Britain. Turing showed his brilliance at a young age which made them curious about him.
Sherborne School
It is an important part of his life because this changed his life forever. Turing went to Sherborne School when he was 13. On the first day to school, he rode 60 miles unaccompanied because of the 1926 General strike. He has always loved mathematics and he once overlooked Albert Einstein's questioning of "Newton Laws of Motion" and deduced it. He was so determined and loved what he does but the teachers never liked him. He was bullied in school and no one liked him much. Then he met Christopher Morcom who changed his life. He is also described as Turing's "first love". Christopher is his fellow classmate who is the only one who liked Turing at that time. Christopher introduced him to ciphers and astronomy. They were attached to each other very much. Eventually, it didn't end well. Christopher Morcom died of tuberculosis on 13th February 1930 which left Turing in his greatest sorrow. After his death, Turing used to write letters to Christopher's mother describing how he meant to him.
Graduation
Because of his interests in Mathematics, he went on to King's College, Cambridge in 1931. After graduation, he was selected for a fellowship at King's College. In 1936 Turing published a paper "On Computable Numbers, With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem"(about the hypothetical devices known as 'Turing Machines') which got him recognition and reputation.
He invented the 'Universal Turing Machine' while working on the Entscheidungsproblem which is capable of performing any mathematical computation if it can be represented as an algorithm. He also said that anything humanly computable can be computed by Universal Turing Machine.
Codebreaker
After the UK declared war on Germany in 1939 Turing went to Bletchley Park the wartime station of Government Code and Cypher school. During the second world war, Polish cryptanalysts tried to decode the Encrypted communications of Germans. They are successful in deducing the internal wiring of Enigma and they devised a code-breaking machine called Bomba. Bomba was successful in German operating procedures Until they made a change in procedures in 1940. Bomba became useless after that. Alan Turing and a team of cryptanalysts and mathematicians designed a related but different code-breaking machine called Bombe. Bombe's intelligence over military procedures of Germany helped Britain very much in winning the war and also shortened the war by 2 years. More than 84,000 German messages were intercepted by the Bombe in a month, which is equal to 2 messages per minute. This intelligence of Bombe almost saved 14 million lives. After the second world war, Alan Turing was appointed as the "Officer of the Order of the British Empire" in 1946 for wartime services but his work was kept secret for many years.
After the war, he came to Hampton, London, and worked on his idea of "Automatic Computing Engine". In 1946 Turing published a paper on his design of "Stored-Program Computer". His work on computer design was compared to Van Neumann's design of "The First Draft of Report on the EDVAC". Turing's work on Computer was praised but the project was always delayed due to his wartime secrecy surrounding his work at Bletchley Park and eventually Stored-Program Computer was kept aside. He later showed interest in morphogenesis and published one of his finest works on morphogenesis "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis". He was an explorer of knowledge.
Death
In 1952 Turing started a relationship with Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old Unemployed man. His house was burgled by Arnold and others. Turing reported the burglary to police, during the investigation he acknowledged his relationship with Murray. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for his Homosexual acts. At that time in the UK, Gross Indecency was considered a criminal offense. He was taken Chemical Castration as an alternative to prison, it affected him a lot. He was found dead on 8 June 1954 by his housekeeper. He died on the previous day by cyanide poisoning, which is later stated as suicide.
His contribution to world war II saved many lives. He is often considered the father of computer science. To say simply he is a mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical Biologist.
"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
_ ALAN TURING.
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