Introductory

"When I was finishing my final year project with my bachelor’s degree, my supervisor said that if I can prove P!=NP problem, there might be a prize named after me. In the field of computer science, Alan M. Turing is such a great computer scientist. Computer scientists are valued by Turing Award and Turing Award is valued by named with “Turing”."

Alan M. Turing, who is recognised as the founder of the computer science, was a famous English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist.

He was born on 23 June 1912. In his early life, Turing showed his talent on mathematics. At the age of nineteen, he studied mathematics at King's College, Cambridge. Later in 1936, he published his seminal paper 'On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem’. In this paper, he firstly introduced the concept of automatic computing machine (also known as Turing machine) work with tape, which is an abstract computing machine that encapsulates the fundamental logical principles of the digital computer.

During the World War II, he joined the Government Code and Cypher School. At Bletchley Park, he led Hut 8 group, responsible for breaking the Enigma code used by Nazi Germany. By using his talent on mathematics, he improved the Polish-designed “Bombo” and found the secret of Engima. This great achievement saved many lives and brought the war to the end two years earlier.

After WWII, he worked in National Physical Laboratory (NPL), responsed for the design of Automatic Computing Engine (ACE). In 1950, he proposed the famous “Turing Test” as a certirion for whether tester is a human or a artifact. Therefore he was universally regarded as the “father of artificial intelligence”.

Unfortunately, due to his homosexality, he suffered political persecution and was found suicide in his house. In 2009, UK government released a statement apologising for the tragedy. Hopefully, similar things will never happen again.

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