Alan Turing
The Life Of a Mathematical Genius
Introduction
Alan Turing was born in 23rd June 1912 in Maida Vale, London. His parents moved to India until his fathers retirement in 1926. Turing and his brother stayed with relatives in England.
Later Life
Turing studied mathematics at Cambridge University and also taught there. In 1936 Turing went to Princeton University in America and returned to England in 1938 and began to work part time but in secret for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchly par, Britain's codebreaking centre during WW2. He made many techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the bombe method. Winston Churchill said that Turing made the biggest contribution to Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany. It is also said that Turing's help shortened the war in Europe by around two to four years.
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After the war...
After the war... he worked for the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the ACE, among the first designs for a stored program computer.
Death
Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, when such behaviour was still criminalised in the UK. He accepted treatment with oestrogen injections (chemical castration). Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from eating a apple with cyanide.