A Teacher
Alan Turing
He defined what it means to compute and then dared to ask whether a machine could think, framing the question as a game.
The transmission
Alan Turing (1912–1954) was a British mathematician and logician who formalized the notion of computation through the abstract ‘Turing machine’ in his 1936 paper ‘On Computable Numbers.’ In his 1950 paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence,’ he proposed the imitation game (now the Turing test) as an operational way to address whether machines can think.
His work is regarded as a foundation of both computer science and artificial intelligence. During the Second World War he played a central role in breaking German ciphers at Bletchley Park.
What they gave
The Turing machine: Formalized the notion of computation in his 1936 paper On Computable Numbers, defining what it means to compute.
- The imitation game: Proposed in 1950 an operational test for whether machines can think, now known as the Turing test.
- Foundations of AI: His formalization launched the artificial intelligence program and shaped every later computational theory of mind.
- Codebreaking: Played a central role in breaking German ciphers at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
In their words
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness results; Alonzo Church’s work on computability; David Hilbert’s program in formal mathematics.
- Taught / Influenced: John von Neumann; Claude Shannon; Joscha Bach; Daniel Schmachtenberger, among the later inheritors of his computational vision.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem1936
- Computing Machinery and Intelligence1950