Alan Turing is considered by many to be the founding father of artificial intelligence and computer science.

Turing was born on June 23 1912, into a solidly upper middle class English family. He was educated at Sherbourne School and King's College, Cambridge. His talent for Mathematics and his disinterest in any other subject came to light soon after he started at Sherbourne. Here Turing was also to discover his homosexuality. He formed a close and intense relationship with a fellow pupil, Christopher Morcom, who was similarly interested in mathematics and science. Morcom’s early death from Tuberculosis had a profound effect on Turing and his scepticism about religion quickly converted to full-blown atheism.

The Turing Machine

Turing went up to King's College Cambridge in 1931. Four years later he was elected a fellow and the following year published a paper detailing what has become known as the Turing Machine. This device performed tasks by reading a series of instructions contained in binary code on a length of tape; in effect a basic computer programme. Turing developed it in an attempt to define algorithms clearly and precisely.

Enigma

After completing a PhD at Princeton University and the outbreak of war in 1939, Turing was recruited by the British cryptanalytic department to work on the deciphering of the Nazi Enigma and Lorenz ciphers. Bletchley Park was home to an eclectic mix of mathematicians, chess players, archaeologists and society girls who worked together in an attempt to crack what was popularly believed to be an unbreakable code.

Turing’s answer was what we would recognise as a crude computer, called the Bombe. Aided by the capture of Enigma code books from the stricken submarine U-559 in 1943 , the Allies were at last able to decipher at high speed the coded messages sent between the German High Command and U Boats in the Atlantic Ocean.¹

MADAM and the Turing Test

After 1945, Turing returned to academia where he was to publish various papers on what he termed as 'thinking machines' or artificial intelligence. After spells at Cambridge University and the Nation Physical Laboratory, he took up a post with Manchester University where he had the opportunity to build a real Turing Machine. The result was the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine (MADAM). Turing was responsible for the Algorithms, programs and operating manual for MADAM and he was able to utilise it to continue his research. During this time he continued to work for British Military Intelligence.

In 1950 he published the landmark paper entitled 'Computer Machinery and Artificial Intelligence', in which he asked 'Can computers think?'. This formed the basis of the Turing test. The test rests on the assertion that computers can only be considered intelligent when their conversational ability makes it impossible for them to be distinguished from a human being. In honour of his achievements, Turing was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1951.

Turing's final years

In 1952 Alan Turing was arrested and convicted of gross indecency after he confessed to having had an homosexual affair with someone implicated in a robbery at Turing's home. ² Unable to face a term in prison, he agreed to a course of female hormones, which it was believed would 'control his lust'. Turing was disgusted by the resulting changes in his body and dispaired at the fact that he was under constant guard, having been privy to state secrets. On June 7th 1954, he ate an apple that he had laced with cyanide. The coroner’s report recorded the cause of death as "self-administered potassium cyanide while in a moment of mental imbalance."