1. ALAN TURING IS THE FATHER OF MODERN COMPUTER SCIENCE.

Turing essentially pioneered the idea of computer memory. In 1936, Turing published a seminal
paper called “On Computable Numbers”, which The Washington Post has called “the founding
document of the computer age.” In the philosophical article, he hypothesized that one day, we could
build machines that could compute any problem that a human could, using 0s and 1s. Turing
proposed single-task machines called Turing machines that would be capable of solving just one type
of math problem, but a “universal computer” would be able to tackle any kind of problem thrown at
it by storing instructional code in the computer’s memory. Turing’s ideas about memory storage and
using a single machine to carry out all tasks laid the foundation for what would become the digital
computer.

In 1945, while working for the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, he came up with the Automatic
Computing Machine, the first digital computer with stored programs. Previous computers didn’t
have electric memory storage, and had to be manually rewired to switch between different
programs.

2. ALAN TURING PLAYED A KEY ROLE IN WINNING WORLD WAR II.

Turing began working at Bletchley Park, Britain’s secret headquarters for its codebreakers during
World War II, in 1939. By one estimate, his work there may have cut the war short by up to two
years. He’s credited with saving millions of lives.

His greatest achievement was cracking the Enigma, a mechanical device used by the German army to
encode secure messages. It proved nearly impossible to decrypt without the correct cipher, which
the German forces changed every day. Turing worked to decipher German naval communications at
a point when German U-boats were sinking ships carrying vital supplies across the Atlantic between
Allied nations. In 1941, Turing and his team managed to decode the German Enigma messages,
helping to steer Allied ships away from the German submarine attacks. In 1942, he traveled to the
U.S. to help the Americans with their own codebreaking work.

3. ALAN TURING BROKE THE RULES TO WRITE TO WINSTON CHURCHILL.

Early on, Bletchley Park’s operations were hampered by a lack of resources, but pleas for better
staffing were ignored by government officials. So, Alan Turing and several other codebreakers at
Bletchley Park went over their heads to write directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill. One of
the codebreakers from Bletchley Park delivered the letter by hand in October 1941.

In response, Churchill immediately fired off a missive to his chief of staff: “Make sure they have all
they want on extreme priority and report to me that this had been done.”

4. ALAN TURING HAD SOME ODD HABITS.

Like many geniuses, Turing was not without his eccentricities. He wore a gas mask while riding his
bike to combat his allergies. Instead of fixing his bike’s faulty chain, he learned exactly when to
dismount to secure it in place before it slipped off. He was known around Bletchley Park for chaining
his tea mug to a radiator to prevent it from being taken by other staffers.
5. ALAN TURING RODE HIS BIKE 62 MILES TO GET TO THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.

6. ALAN TURING TRIED OUT FOR THE OLYMPICS.

He almost became an Olympic athlete, too. He came in fifth place at a qualifying marathon for the
1948 Olympics with a 2-hour, 46-minute finish (11 minutes slower than the 1948 Olympic marathon
winner). However, a leg injury held back his athletic ambitions that year.

7. ALAN TURING WAS PROSECUTED FOR BEING GAY.

In 1952, Turing was arrested after reporting a burglary in his home. In the course of the
investigation, the police discovered Turing’s relationship with another man, Arnold Murray.
Homosexual relationships were illegal in the UK at the time, and he was charged with “gross
indecency.” He pled guilty on the advice of his lawyer, and opted to undergo chemical castration
instead of serving time in jail.

8. IN THE UK, THERE IS NOW A LAW NAMED AFTER ALAN TURING.

Turing was only one of the many men who suffered after being prosecuted for their homosexuality
under 19th-century British indecency laws. Homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK in 1967, but
the previous convictions were never overturned. Turing’s Law, which went into effect in 2017,
posthumously pardoned men who had been convicted for having consensual gay sex before the
repeal. According to one of the activists who campaigned for the mass pardons, around 15,000 of
the 65,000 gay men convicted under the outdated law are still alive.

9. ALAN TURING POISONED HIMSELF ... MAYBE.

There is still a bit of mystery surrounding Turing’s death at the age of 41. Turing died of cyanide
poisoning, in what is widely believed to have been a suicide. Turing’s life had been turned upside
down by his arrest. He lost his job and his security clearance. By order of the court, he had to take
hormones intended to “cure” his homosexuality, which caused him to grow breasts and made him
impotent. But not everyone is convinced that he died by suicide.

10. Turing test and the imitation game: A test which is still used to measure artificial intelligence.

Turing's original article describes a simple party game involving three players. Player A is a man,
player B is a woman and player C (who plays the role of the interrogator) is of either sex. In the
imitation game, player C is unable to see either player A or player B, and can communicate with
them only through written notes. By asking questions of player A and player B, player C tries to
determine which of the two is the man and which is the woman. Player A's role is to trick the
interrogator into making the wrong decision, while player B attempts to assist the interrogator in
making the right one.

Turing then asks:

"What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game? Will the interrogator decide
wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a
man and a woman?" These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?"[24]
The original imitation game test, in which the player A is replaced with a computer. The computer is
now charged with the role of the man, while player B continues to attempt to assist the interrogator.

The second version appeared later in Turing's 1950 paper. Similar to the original imitation game test,
the role of player A is performed by a computer. However, the role of player B is performed by a
man rather than a woman.

Let us fix our attention on one particular digital computer C. Is it true that by modifying this
computer to have an adequate storage, suitably increasing its speed of action, and providing it with
an appropriate programme, C can be made to play satisfactorily the part of A in the imitation game,
the part of B being taken by a man?

In this version, both player A (the computer) and player B are trying to trick the interrogator into
making an incorrect decision.