Biographies

The pioneer of computer science and artificial intelligence, Alan Mathison Turing was a British mathematician and logician who lived from June 23, 1912, to June 7, 1954. Turing enrolled in King's College in Cambridge in 1931, and after completing his undergraduate studies there, he moved to Princeton University in the US to pursue his doctorate. He eventually helped the military crack Germany's renowned Enigma encryption system after returning to Cambridge following the start of World War II, which aided the Allies in winning the war.

He was actually a very intelligent academic, far above average. It is stated that when Cambridge University announced the appointment at the time, the entire university even observed a half-day holiday to mark this historic occasion. He was the university's youngest-ever lecturer. Should we his descendants take off our hats and salute him if I told them that Turing transformed the course of human civilization twice during his lifetime, in two very separate domains and by two entirely different approaches? Of course, the most notable accomplishment is that he created the renowned Turing machine. (Güven Kaya 2022) studied that because of his 1936 article (Turing, 1936), in which he established the boundaries of computability and presented the theoretical device—now known as the Turing Machine—capable of mechanically replicating the computational abilities of a human mathematician using a pen and paper. On that prototype, all of the computers we use today were developed. Today, you are using a Turing machine whether you are "snapping" on a keyboard or "sliding" on a smartphone.

Please understand that Turing is only a theoretical model; no actual Turing machines have ever been created. And Turing put forth the idea in 1936, at the age of just 24. One other thing: this was only a portion of Turing's 24-year-old work; it was not the outcome of a lengthy, expensive, or extensive research study. The 24-year-old Turing's scattered thoughts had been floating about all day, and this was just a small portion of them. Why is it the case? Because the first complete articulation of the Turing machine idea was in a footnote to his thesis, which is where it first appeared.