2.8 Alan Turing

 A) Read the first document, "A great inventor":

a) Use your own words to sum up Turing's invention.

b) What was Bletchley park? Which other places are mentioned? Why? 

c) How did Turing die? Why?

B) Focus on document B:

a) What kind of document is it?

b) Who was Gordon Brown at that time?

c) Why did Britain have to say sorry?

 

C) Use your own words to explain the rumour...

Alan Turing

A)   “A great inventor”  adapted from bbc.co.uk/history

 

Alan Turing was born on 23 June, 1912, in London. His father was in the Indian Civil Service and Turing's parents lived in India until his father's retirement in 1926. Turing and his brother stayed with friends and relatives in England. Turing studied mathematics at Cambridge University, and subsequently taught there, working in the burgeoning world of quantum mechanics. It was at Cambridge that he developed the proof which states that automatic computation cannot solve all mathematical problems. This concept, also known as the Turing machine, is considered the basis for the modern theory of computation.

In 1936, Turing went to Princeton University in America, returning to England in 1938. He began to work secretly part-time for the British cryptanalytic department, the Government Code and Cypher School. On the outbreak of war he took up full-time work at its headquarters, Bletchley Park.

Here he played a vital role in deciphering the messages encrypted by the German Enigma machine, which provided vital intelligence for the Allies. He took the lead in a team that designed a machine known as a bombe that successfully decoded German messages. He became a well-known and rather eccentric figure at Bletchley.

After the war, Turing turned his thoughts to the development of a machine that would logically process information. He worked first for the National Physical Laboratory (1945-1948). His plans were dismissed by his colleagues and the lab lost out on being the first to design a digital computer. It is thought that Turing's blueprint would have secured them the honour, as his machine was capable of computation speeds higher than the others. In 1949, he went to Manchester University where he directed the computing laboratory and developed a body of work that helped to form the basis for the field of artificial intelligence. In 1951 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1952, Turing was arrested and tried for homosexuality, then a criminal offence. To avoid prison, he accepted injections of oestrogen for a year, which were intended to neutralise his libido. In that era, homosexuals were considered a security risk as they were open to blackmail. Turing's security clearance was withdrawn, meaning he could no longer work for GCHQ, the post-war successor to Bletchley Park. He committed suicide on 7 June, 1954.

B)   “Gordon Brown: I'm proud to say sorry to a real war hero”

The treatment of code-breaker Alan Turing was utterly unfair, says Gordon Brown   Daily Telegraph 10 Sep 2009

This has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude that characterise the British experience. Earlier this year, I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against fascism and declared the outbreak of the Second World War.

So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain's fight against the darkness of dictatorship: that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely.

C)    Rumour has it… adapted from urbanlegends.about.com

 

For years it has been rumored that Apple's iconic logo, a stylized, solid white apple missing a bite on one side, was inspired by circumstances surrounding the death of Alan Turing, the groundbreaking mathematician and computer scientist who committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple in 1954.

Not so, says the man who actually created the logo, graphic designer Rob Janoff, who laughs it off as "a wonderful urban legend." The concept was purely visual in inspiration, he says, with the bite taken out only to provide scale so the apple wouldn't be mistaken for a cherry.