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Alan Turing

Alan Turing is not only credited with being the founder of computer science itself, but also a mathematician, and visionary. His work has had effects not only in the technological world, but also played a role in World War II. Alan Turing was born on June 23, 1912, in Paddington, London. While enrolled as a student at Cambridge University from 1932-35, he studied quantum mechanics, probability and logic which served as major stepping stones for much of his future work.

And while at Princeton University from 1936-38 he wrote papers on logic, algebra and number theory. In 1938-39 (during World War II), he returned to Cambridge, and was introduced to the German Enigma cipher problem. The German Enigma cipher problem was the attempt to decipher encrypted messages used by the Germans. During this eventually successful attempt to decipher the German’s codes, was Turing’s invention of the Bombe, a machine used to decode encrypted messages using logical deductions.

During his years of post-war works, Turing wrote several papers on machine intelligence, programming, neura nets, and prospects for A. I. (artificial intelligence). In the end Alan Turing died on June 7, 1954, in Wilmslow, Cheshire, as a result of cyanide poisoning. Because of his vast and veried fields of expertise dealing with the mechanical and technological arenas, Turing is credited for being the first computer scientist.

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