Questions and Answers
What did Turing do during World War II?
He worked on the Government Code and Cypher School
What did the British Prime Minister do in 2013?
He made an official apology on behalf of the British government
What is Turing credited with?
The development of the first computer
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Study Notes
- Alan Turing was born on 23 June 1912 in London.
- He attended King's College, Cambridge and graduated with a degree in mathematics.
- During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park.
- In 1948, Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Machine Laboratory at the Victoria University of Manchester.
- There, Turing helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology.
- Turing wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction.
- Despite these accomplishments, Turing was never fully recognised in Britain during his lifetime because much of his work was covered by the Official Secrets Act.
- In 2013, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way [Turing] was treated".
- In 2019, the BBC series, as voted by the audience, named him the greatest person of the 20th century.
Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He is also credited with the development of the first computer.
