ALAN
TURING
Some facts
- Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912
- He created the foundations for modern computer technology
- Alan Turing played a crucial role in braking the Enigma
- He died at the age of only 41 on June 7, 1951
The life of Alan Turing
Alan Turing is often called the father of modern computing. He was a brilliant mathematician and logician. He developed the idea of the modern computer and artificial intelligence. During the Second World War he worked for the government breaking the enemies codes and Churchill said he shortened the war by two years.
Born in London in 1912, Alan Turing attended Sherborne School in Dorset and then, later, King's College Cambridge and Princeton University in the USA.
At the outbreak of World War Two, Alan joined the Government Codes and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. He worked on breaking the code for the German Enigma machine, a device for sending coded messages to units of the German forces. Alan developed a machine (the Bombe) which helped break the code. He also went on to break the Naval Enigma, an even more complicated machine. His wartime services helped to win the war, but his work was so secret that very few people were aware of the importance of what he had done at Bletchley Park.
Alan Turing went on to become deputy director of the computing lab at Manchester University.
He sadly died too young, in tragic circumstances, a victim of the discriminatory laws of the day. It is often wondered how much further ahead computing would be, if he had lived.