The imitation game - Tesina

The Imitation Game

“Il vero è l’uomo che ha decifrato il codice”

Enigma Alan Turing

• He was born on June 23, 1912, in London.
• Student at «Sherborne school».
• Precociously interested in Math and science.
• Student at King’s College since 1931.
• In 1938 he took a part-time position in a code-breaking organization in Cambridge.

Turing and WWII

• Leading figure in the wartime code-breaking field.
• Specification of the Bombe, a calculator used to help decipher German Enigma encrypted signals.
• Turing became a hero of war, since he shortened the War by two years.

The Turing Machine

• Turing introduced the concept of a Universal machine.
• This machine is capable of performing any mathematical computation given by algorithm.

Graphic representation of the Turing Machine

An Turing working at Bletchley Park

Turing’s gift

• The “Bombe” had already been used in the Polish counterintelligence: the brilliant idea that Turing had programming was the “Bombe”.
• His machine was the first to be programmed, and we can consider it as the first of a long series of programmed machines, the ones that today we call “computers”.

The “problem” of his homosexuality

• Homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom in the early 1950s.
• When Turing admitted to the police, in January, 1952, that he had had a sexual relationship with the 19-years-old Arnold Murray, he was accused indecently.

The death of a genius

• He was forced to choose between life imprisonment and an hormonal cure, which would have kept his freedom, but would have made him impotent.
• He chose the hormonal castration, but he wasn’t able to cohabit with the effects of the treatment.
• Turing died on June 7, 1954, after eating a cyanide poisoned apple.

Still between us

• We have just said that the cause of Turing’s death was an apple.
• The US company “Apple” has used the symbol of an apple as a tribute to Turing.

Turing’s Awards

• Shortly after World War II, Alan Turing was awarded by the British Empire for his work.
• In 1999, Time magazine named him one of its "100 Most Important People of the 20th century”.
• Turing has been recognized for his impact on computer science, with many crediting him as the "founder" of the field.