Alan Turing

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a British mathematician, logician, and computer scientist. He is known for his groundbreaking work in theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Turing's contributions to the field include the concept of a universal Turing machine and his role in breaking the Enigma code during World War II.

Made several fundamental contributions to theoretical computer science, including the Turing machine computational model, the conceiving of the stored program concept and the designing of the high-speed ACE design. Independently of Alonzo Church, he formulated the Church-Turing thesis and proved that first-order logic is undecidable. He also explored the philosophical issues concerning artificial intelligence, proposing what is now known as Turing test.

Alan Mathison Turing was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science.

• After the war, Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the Automatic Computing Engine, one of the first designs for a stored-program computer.
• Turing wrote on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, first observed in the 1960s.
• Despite these accomplishments, he was never fully recognised during his lifetime because much of his work was covered by the Official Secrets Act.
• His portrait appears on the Bank of England £50 note, first released on 23 June 2021 to coincide with his birthday.