Alan Turing
The creator of computers
Alan Turing
Who? What? Where? When?
What he did!
Alan Turing was a highly intelligent man, achieving a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge and a Mathematics degree with distinction. He invented the idea of a ‘Universal Machine’ that could decode and perform any set of instructions. Ten years later he turned this revolutionary idea into a plan for an electronic computer, capable of running any program.
His background and earlier life!
He was born Alan Mathison Turing on June 23 in 1912, in Maida Vale, London, England. As a young child, he showed signs of high intelligence, which some of his teachers recognized, but did not always respect. At 13 years old, he was sent to Sherborne School, a large boarding school in Dorset. The education system gave his scientific mind no encouragement, so Turing studied advanced modern scientific ideas, such as relativity, on his own, running far ahead of the school syllabus.
World war ii
During World War II, Turing was a leading participant in wartime code-breaking, particularly that of German ciphers. On the 4th of September, Turing reported to Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, England, where as a continuing member of the Government Code and Cypher School he contributed to the breaking of German codes. Specifically, he invented a machine named the "bombe" which deciphered German Enigma code faster than its predecessor.
Alan Turing poisoned himself in 1954 due to personal matters, leaving behind him much intriguing, unfinished work in physics and biology.