Celebrating the life of Alan Turing
JUN 21, 2012
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.026118
The Guardian : One of the most brilliant mathematicians and computer scientists of the 20th century, whose life was cut short when he committed suicide after details about his personal life were made public, is the focus of a year-long exhibit at the UK Science Museum. Alan Turing was a key architect in cracking Germany’s Enigma code during World War II and founded many of the commands forming the basic logic that underpins modern computers. The exhibit includes parts of one of the machines used to decode the Enigma messages; the 1950 Pilot Ace computer , which Turing helped develop; and the computer tortoises from the 1951 Festival of Britain , which so delighted him when he saw them. Turing’s family received a formal public apology in 2009 by then prime minister Gordon Brown for the way the UK government had treated him.
More about the authors
Paul Guinnessy, pguinnes@aip.org
© 2012 American Institute of Physics
