Google celebrates 100 years since the birth of Turing

[gary]

Google today celebrates today what would have been the 100th birthday of Alan Turing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing)
where they have depicted a Universal Turing Machine operating on their home page (http://www.google.com.au/).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine

Any computer that can emulate a Universal Turing Machine can emulate any other computer.

Turing left behind an incredible legacy with regards the mathematical principals of
computation. How computation may well underpin many of the driving forces of
nature itself is yet to be fully understood, but no doubt such a future understanding
will be traced back to some of the work of Turing.

When it was revealed in the 1970's that the British had broken the German
codes during WWII, it came as a shock to most of us and as details emerged
over the construction of Colossus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer) and the contributions of people such as
Turing, we were in awe.

There was certainly a mad scramble to re-write the history books.

How many lives were saved by the efforts of this group?
We will probably never know with any certainty.

But of course Turing met with the saddest of treatment and met with the saddest
of ends. Yet he was beyond doubt one of the greatest heroes of WWII and one of the
greatest minds of the 20th Century.

[Dennis]

Hi Gary

Thanks for the news bulletin. I recall watching a documentary about Turin and was shocked and dismayed at his treatment at the hands of the political and scientific establishment of the time. Such unnecessary suffering and a very sad loss.

Cheers

Dennis

[Omaroo]

Thanks for the post Gary. I've been a dedicated fan of Alan Turing's for decades too. The story of Bletchley Park is one that I could re-visit a thousand times and still be utterly fascinated.

Like the treatment that Oppenheimer received (all around the same time of course), Turing really got the wrong end of the stick for his work. Their involvement in projects both utterly vital to the allied war effort must have been so incredibly scrutinised, under such intense conditions, that I doubt we have the capacity to imagine the circumstance now.

While their treatment can and should be dismissed as completely barbaric in our time, I wonder how we would have reacted back then when so much was at stake that subversives - perceived or not - were very much public enemy number one... especially when they held positions with access to top secrets. I think that over-reaction could only be expected with a world war having just taken the lives of millions of people and the promise of even more destructive power looming as they entered the Cold War years.

Our general tolerance to difference has come a fair way during the ensuing decades, but we obviously have a fair way to go.

[Hans Tucker]

Priminster Gordon Brown has presented an apology for the way Turing was treated, although after a petition was submitted and he also wrote to the Queen to ask for Turing to be awarded a posthumous knighthood.

Anyway, what a truly brilliant mind.