The Turing Guide PDF
Preview The Turing Guide
The Turing Guide THE TURING GUIDE b. jack copeland jonathan p. bowen mark sprevak robin wilson and others 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2017 he moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946810 ISBN 978–0–19–874782–6 (hbk.) ISBN 978–0–19–874783–3 (pbk.) Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. In memoriam MAVIS BATEY (1921–2013) CATHERINE CAUGHEY (1923–2008) IVOR GRATTAN-GUINNESS (1941–2014) PETER HILTON (1923–2010) JERRY ROBERTS (1920–2014) FOREWORD BY ANDREW HODGES Author of the bestseller Alan Turing, the Enigma his book celebrates Alan Turing’s place in mathematics, science, technology, and philosophy, and includes chapters by a number of Turing’s contemporaries. A glance at its pages will show the diversity of the contributions. Some are fastidious scholarship, bringing to life details of smudged typescripts and incomplete manuscripts from over 60 years ago. Some convey mod- ern scientiic developments. Some explore personal memories, or philosophical speculations. But they share a special concern to shed new light on hidden history. Turing’s centenary year relected a general public sense that the issues of Alan Turing’s life and work are as relevant as ever in the twenty-irst century. One reason is obvious: the univer- sality of the computer has invaded everyday consciousness. It has changed the relationship between the individual and the social world. he computer has made possible impassioned public campaigns for Turing’s oicial recognition, demanding some remedy for his identity as a criminalized gay man. At the same time, the signiicance of the modern state’s computer- based collection and analysis of information, of which he was the scientiic founder, has made a new impact on the world political arena. Turing himself knew that the computer would involve everything: it was preigured in his futuristic discussion of the meaning of mechanical intelligence, where his all-embracing discourse touched provocatively on topics from sex to cryptography. Andrew Hodges Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford PREFACE T his book celebrates the many facets of Alan Turing, the British mathematician and com- puting pioneer who is widely considered to be the father of computer science. he book is written for general readers, and Turing’s scientiic and mathematical concepts are explained in an accessible way. Each of the book’s eight parts covers a diferent aspect of Turing’s life and work. Part I is biographical: Chapter 1 contains a timeline of Turing’s short but brilliant life, Chapter 2 is an appraisal by family member Dermot Turing, and Chapter 3, by Turing’s close colleague and friend Peter Hilton, describes what it was like to work with a genius like Alan Turing, while Chapter 4 focuses on his trial—for being gay—and his shocking punishment. Part II deals with the early origins of the computer, and focuses in particular on Turing’s ‘universal computing machine’, now known as the universal Turing machine. Part III explains exactly what Turing did as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. he war was a disastrous interlude for many, but for Turing it provided an internationally important outlet for his crea- tive genius. It is no overstatement to say that, without Turing, the war would probably have lasted longer, and might even have been won by the Nazis. he ultrasecret nature of Turing’s wartime work meant that much of what he did was kept secret until recent times. Some remains classiied to this day. When the war was over, Turing let Bletchley Park and joined London’s National Physical Laboratory. Part IV is about his post-war work on computing, irst in London and then in Manchester: Turing had his own quirky but highly efective approach to designing hardware and sotware. Part V discusses artiicial intelligence (AI), called ‘machine intelligence’ by Turing. He was AI’s irst major prophet and contributed a slew of brilliant concepts to the ield that he founded. Part VI goes on to explain Turing’s theory of morphogenesis, his inal scientiic con- tribution. his theory tries to unlock the secret of how shapes—such as the shape of a starish or a daisy—are formed during biological growth. Turing’s brilliant 1952 paper on morphogenesis made his reputation as a mathematical biologist, and was also the starting point of the modern ield called ‘artiicial life’. Part VII describes some of Turing’s contributions to pure and applied mathematics, including his ‘Banburismus’ method, used against the German Enigma code, and his work on the Entscheidungsproblem or ‘decision problem’, which gave rise to his universal computing machine. Part VIII is, as its title says, a inale: its topics range from speculations about the nature of the universe to a discussion of recent plays, novels, and music about Turing.
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