Alan M. Turing: How to Succeed in Building a Machine That Won a War Without Really Thinking

June 23, 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the pioneers of computer science and the design of computers.

Alan M. Turing (June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954) was a British mathematician and cryptanalyst who developed many of the foundations of computer science and artificial intelligence.  His name has been given to a means of determining whether a machine is intelligent and to a theoretical model for determining whether a mathematical function can be computed.  His work on codebreaking machines helped the Allies win World War II.  He designed one of the first general-purpose stored-program computers.

In 1952, Turing was arrested and convicted of engaging in a homosexual act and underwent chemical castration.  On June 8, 1954 he was found dead of cyanide poisoning and an inquest decided that it was suicide, although his mother believed that it was an accident with chemicals he was working with that contained cyanide.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) presents the A. M. Turing Award annually since 1966.  The award is considered the most prestigious in the field of computer science and the equivalent of the Nobel Prize.  The recipient of the 2012 A.M. Turing Award is Judea Pearl.