Alan Turing

Click on the above to go to the magazine special issue on Alan Turing

The grandfather of computing

Alan Turing is the most significant computer scientist of the 20th century. In his short life, he helped set out what computers could and couldn’t do, helped win World War II, helped build one of the first computers, set out a test for how we might decide if a machine was intelligent kick-starting the field of Artificial Intelligence and more. Sadly, despite being a war hero he was persecuted for being gay by the British authorities and as a result committed suicide. What a loss to the world, all the things he would have gone on to do.

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Alan Turing’s Life

Alan Turing smiling

Alan Turing’s life was full of amazing success, not least being a key person who helped the Allies win World War II, but it also included great unhappiness and ultimately tragedy linked to the fact that he was gay… (read on).

Was the first computer a Bombe?

A group of enthusiasts at Bletchley Park, the top secret wartime codebreaking base, rebuilt a primitive computing device used in the Second World War to help the Allies listen in on U-boat conversations. It was called ‘the Bombe’. Professor Nigel Smart, an expert on cryptography, tells us more…. (read on).

The Turing Machine (in Lego)

One of the greatest achievements of Alan Turing was that of what we now call the Turing Machine. It is an elegant model of computation that also showed what computers would one day be able (and not able) to do … Make a working Turing Machine out of Lego by following the instructions in this series of articles and learn about computation (read on).

Meet the chatbots

Sitting down and having a nice chat with a computer because they are your friend probably isn’t something you do every day. The idea has roots that stretch far back into the past. It’s a dream that goes back to Alan Turing, and then even a little further. (read on).

How did the zebra get its stripes?

There are many myths and stories about how different animals gained their distinctive patterns from African myths to Just So Stories. It was Alan Turing though who worked out the actual way it happens. (read on).

A visit to the Turing Machine: a short story

Read this short story by Greg Michaelson centred on a Turing Machine after the apocalypse. Greg is both an Emeritus professor of computer science at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and a novelist and a short story writer (read on).

More to come …

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