Turing Alan

When you hear with what awe in technical circles speak about Alan Turing, it is hardly believed that the name of this English scientist did not become well-known as, for example, a name of Albert Einstein.^[1]

"This person threw down a challenge to traditional views — Vint Cerf, the chief Internet evangelist of Google considers. — His ideas which appeared at the beginning of history of ADP equipment were surprisingly prophetical. What the concept of computability, a basis of everything is necessary that is connected with algorithmic tasks".

"People conduct calculations already thousands of years — Moshe Vardi, honored professor of Rice University notes. — But the theory of calculations really gained development only in the 20th century, and Turing became one of her founding fathers or even the main thing from them".

Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in London. At the age of 22 years after the termination of Royal college of the Cambridge university it was elected by the full member of his scientific organization. One of its most important theoretical works — the hypothetical programmable device known today as the Turing machine. It reads out the program from the paper strip of infinite length and interprets it according to the built-in table of rules. The Turing machine played the major role in formation of the theory of calculations.

Turing is known to much as the scientist who helped to crack the cipher which Germany for transmission of messages used during World War II. At top secret school of codes and ciphers in Bletchli-parke Turing received work thanks to the researches. In addition to the huge help to military investigation, the work done by Turing at that time allowed to lay the foundation for creation of computers.

Further Turing made the significant contribution to a number of areas. So-called "Turing test" is widely known: if at a conversation with machine it is impossible to guess that it is not the person, it is possible to consider that it has artificial intelligence. Besides, Turing published the work "Chemical bases of a morphogenesis" stating a hypothesis of formation of self-organizing biological structures.

Celebrations

In memory of the great scientist in 1966 the Association for Computing Machinery founded an annual award which is called an analog Nobel in the computer world. This year the award ceremony of Turing held on June 15-16 to San Francisco took place in an unusual format. Organizers tried to bring together as much as possible winners of an award for different years. And it worked well — were present at a ceremony 32 awarded with a prize.

Notes