資料來源 : WordNet®

Alan Turing
     n : English mathematician who conceived of the Turing machine
         and broke German codes during World War II (1912-1954)
         [syn: {Turing}, {Alan Mathison Turing}]

資料來源 : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Alan Turing
     
         Alan M. Turing, 1912-06-22/3? - 1954-06-07.  A
        British mathematician, inventor of the {Turing Machine}.
        Turing also proposed the {Turing test}.  Turing's work was
        fundamental in the theoretical foundations of computer
        science.
     
        Turing was a student and fellow of {King's College Cambridge}
        and was a graduate student at {Princeton University} from 1936
        to 1938.  While at Princeton Turing published "On Computable
        Numbers", a paper in which he conceived an {abstract machine},
        now called a {Turing Machine}.
     
        Turing returned to England in 1938 and during World War II, he
        worked in the British Foreign Office.  He masterminded
        operations at {Bletchley Park}, UK which were highly
        successful in cracking the Nazis "Enigma" codes during World
        War II.  Some of his early advances in computer design were
        inspired by the need to perform many repetitive symbolic
        manipulations quickly.  Before the building of the {Colossus}
        computer this work was done by a roomful of women.
     
        In 1945 he joined the {National Physical Laboratory} in London
        and worked on the design and construction of a large computer,
        named {Automatic Computing Engine} (ACE).  In 1949 Turing
        became deputy director of the Computing Laboratory at
        Manchester where the {Manchester Automatic Digital Machine},
        the worlds largest memory computer, was being built.
     
        He also worked on theories of {artificial intelligence}, and
        on the application of mathematical theory to biological forms.
        In 1952 he published the first part of his theoretical study
        of morphogenesis, the development of pattern and form in
        living organisms.
     
        Turing was gay, and died rather young under mysterious
        circumstances.  He was arrested for violation of British
        homosexuality statutes in 1952.  He died of potassium cyanide
        poisoning while conducting electrolysis experiments.  An
        inquest concluded that it was self-administered but it is now
        thought by some to have been an accident.
     
        There is an excellent biography of Turing by Andrew Hodges,
        subtitled "The Enigma of Intelligence" and a play based on it
        called "Breaking the Code".  There was also a popular summary
        of his work in Douglas Hofstadter's book "Godel, Escher,
        Bach".
     
        {(http://www.AlanTuring.net/)}.
     
        (2001-10-09)