PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW: PART 2- ALAN TURING

Alan Turing has had some fame as of late thanks to the brilliant movie about his life called The Imitation Game which I highly recommend. Benedict Cumberbatch played the mathematical genius that Turing was very well and this post serves as a further insight into the man that he was and the reason everyone should know his name.

Turing was born in Britain in the early 19th century and was gifted from day one. His parents and family friends all agreed that in his early life he showed, as they put it, "the personality disorder that leads someone to become a great mathematician." At the age of seven while on a family picnic, Alan noticed that the families he was with had forgotten any sweetener for their tea. By studying the flight patterns of the bees in the surrounding area, he found the main source of their honey and brought it back to the picnic. Seven years old, people. Seven.

Another anecdote that shows this further is about when Alan's first bike began to break down. He noticed that every 4 or so rotations of the bike chain would cause it to fall off the tracks and break. He rigged a machine to anticipate when this would happen based on when he predicted the chain would break and place the chain back where it was supposed to be. Most 13 year- olds would buy a new chain, that was too boring for Alan. In fact, Alan apparently told his mother that buying a new chain didn't even cross his mind.

Alan Turing would grow up to be a pioneer computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, mathematical biologist, and marathon and ultra distance runner. Also, he is essentially the inventor of something you might of heard of recently called the computer.

Back then he called it the Turing Machine and it was used to crack the German army's formerly unbreakable code called Enigma, basically winning the war for the Allies. It is estimated that Alan's work cut 3-5 years off of the war and saved countless lives because of it. During his work on code breaking, Alan, who never was one for social graces, would bring in apples for everyone that he worked with as his way of reaching out. Some of you might have connected the dots already.

After the war he was the pioneer on the discovery of several scientific findings, one being on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction that wouldn't emerge until the 1960's.

So out of everything I've stated above, why is it that it took 70 years for us to finally give this man the recognition he deserves? This is because in the 3 years before Alan's mysterious death, he was convicted of being a homosexual and sentenced to hormone therapy. This eventually lead to Alan's alleged suicide by poisoning in 1952. Well, someone who was very influential to the past 2 decades knew he had Alan to thank for his success.

That man was Steve Jobs. Ever wonder why Apple is called Apple? Ever wonder why their logo was rainbow? It is rumored that Steve Jobs made these decisions as a silent homage to the great man Alan Turning was.

Looking at the big picture here, there is no way we could quantify the progress we made because of Alan or what we would be like if he had never existed. What we can conclude is that Alan Turing is arguably the most important person to ever have lived in the 20th century and he was killed (or driven to suicide) because of something as trivial as sexual orientation. Of course now we look at this as immoral because it is, however, this brings up an alarming thought.

Who is the Alan Turing of our time? And have we built a society that allows him/her to grow and change the world or hate themselves for something they can't change? Research shows that women in America are less likely to pursue careers in science because of the patriarchy and this is saddening. The female Alan Turing could be out there being told that she would make a better housewife or mother rather than saving lives and progressing humanity.

This was a short summary of the great man Alan Turing was and I suggest you all read further into his life and work. Not only to honor him but to remember that the strange and peculiar people of today could be the genius that change the world tomorrow. Alan was one of the most gifted minds of the century and who knows where we would be today if he had lived a full life and was accepted for who he was.


More on Turing:

http://www.systemtoolbox.com/article.php?history_id=3