Mathematics
British mathematician · 1912–1954
The universal machine, computability, and whether a machine can think.
Start learning Alan →How Alan Turing, in 1936, captured the very idea of mechanical computation in a single imaginary device - a machine reading and writing symbols on an endless tape - and thereby founded the theory of computation.
Turing’s proof that some problems can never be solved by any computer - the unsolvability of the Halting Problem - and how it settled a great question in the foundations of mathematics and revealed a permanent boundary…
Turing’s 1950 question and the ‘imitation game’ - how he proposed to replace the unanswerable question ‘can machines think?’ with a concrete behavioural test, founding the philosophy of artificia…
Turing’s war - how he led the codebreaking effort against the German Enigma cipher at Bletchley Park, designed the Bombe machine that cracked it, and helped change the course of the Second World War.
Turing’s vast and varied legacy - from the theory of computation and artificial intelligence to his pioneering work on how patterns form in living things - and his place as one of the founders of the modern world.
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