The Brains behind the CPU ~ Alan Turing

Alan Turing was in many ways the brains behind the brains of original computing.  Although throughout his life he was unable to see the full physical creation of his ideas, the mental creation he brought together became a foundation for future works.  Turing lived and developed his ideas between the World Wars and was instrumental in coding messages for the Allies and in helping them break Axis codes. 


I found a great little review of his life written for free here by Andrew Hodges. The article was also published in the British Dictionary of National Biography in 1995.



The first paragraph that stood out to me talked about Turing's core interest...


"Turing was captivated by the potential of the computer he had conceived. Although his 1936 work had shown the absolute limitations of the computable, he had become fascinated by what Turing machines could do, rather than by what they could not. He had long abandoned his youthful expectations of finding free will or free spirits through quantum mechanics. His later thought was strongly determinist and atheistic in character. And by the end of the Second World War he had turned against the tentative idea that there were steps of 'intuition' in human thought corresponding to uncomputable operations. Instead, he held that the computer would offer unlimited scope for practical progress towards embodying intelligence in an artificial form."


If only he could see the world today.  I am sure he would be overzealous with the leaps and bounds we have taken in the world of computing.  But at the same time I am also sure he would be thinking up the next generation of technological advances and limitations.  It takes nothing short of genius to correctly see what the world will be like decades in advance.


However, even with his advanced foresight he was unluckily unable to bring his ideas together in their fully glory during his life time.  In various locations of both universities and work he often saw his own projects set aside while other projects were pushed through.  However, throughout it all he never lost his drive.  In fact, surprising enough, he the drive of an Olympian...


"Although losing in the race to implement a universal machine, and slow to communicate or compete in the game of scientific priority, Turing ran very competitively in a literal sense. After the war he developed his strength in cross-country running with frequent long-distance training and top-rank competition in amateur athletics. He would amaze his colleagues by running to scientific meetings, beating the travellers by public transport, and only an injury prevented his serious consideration for the British team in the 1948 Olympic Games."


Near the end of his life it is interesting to note some of the other developments in other fields and areas.  He specifically took a closer look at nature.  And he applied the idea of trying to base computing concepts off of the greatest example we each have -- the world in which we live.


"Outwardly an extraordinary change of direction, for him it was a return to a fundamental problem; even in childhood he had been spotted and sketched 'watching the daisies grow'; from childhood Natural Wonders to D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Formto a more recent interest in how brains grow new connections, he had sustained an interest in the biological structures so easily taken for granted, yet so complex and bizarre from the viewpoint of physics. Out of all the phenomena of life he fixed on the way asymmetry can arise out of initially symmetric conditions as first thing requiring explanation, and his answer, given without apparent reference to anyone else's work, was that it could arise from the nonlinearity of the chemical equations of reaction and diffusion. He modelled hypothetical chemical reactions on the circle and the plane, and for the repetitive numerical simulation required to test his ideas, became the first serious user of an electronic computer for mathematical research."


In it all he was in the simplest forms a genius and in generous terms prophetic of the future of technology.  But in any event he stands as a legacy of the mind that thought up the idea of a solid computing process.