1912 - 1954
Overview:
Alan Turing is the classic example of how an unconventional thinker can still result from a relatively conservative education and upbringing. He was a pioneer in his investigations of the potential of the computer and its applications. Like many other pioneers, he was well regarded for his time but full recognition did not really come until later.
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Alan Turing
This man created the first real "computer brain".
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Country:
United Kingdom
Type
of hero: Environmental, Cultural and Development Rights
Attributes:
Inventiveness, Creativity, Persistence
Biography:
Alan Turing was born in London and educated at Kings College in Cambridge before moving on to study at Princeton University. In his early life, he showed great interest in the sciences.
Through high school, he had a few behavioural problems but things improved when he entered University. Things seemed to suit him better there. While he was a student in Mathematics, he also used elements of physics and philosophy in his work. He had been profoundly effected by the early death of a close friend while at school and applied some of his energies into dealing with this. The appreciation of liberal attitudes at University suited the style of thinking he had at that time.
He returned to Britain in 1938 and spent the Second World War with the Department of Communication. He had completed some work with computers before the war, investigating how computing could be used to solve a range of problems. Computers were especially useful for breaking codes, as they are able to complete thousands of complex calculations in a short period of time. Still there are limits as to how many can be performed.
Turing was able to code in special features related to human intelligence that limited the sorts of calculations that needed to be made. He continued to work on computers after the war, moving to Manchester University in 1949 to work on construction of what was then the computer with the largest memory in the world. (Your computer at home probably has more memory now!)
In exploring potential uses for computers, he focused on developing programs that resulted in computers making similar decisions to those made by humans, thus giving the impression that the computer cold think. The current success of computers in chess championships shows that indeed they have made some progress in this field.
Citations
& References:
Links:
http://www.schweitzer.org/
References
Bullock, A (ed.) 1981 Great Lives of the Twentieth Century Peerage Books London
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