Tahsinur Rahim, Grade 12
UWC-USA
The movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch plays a person that inspires me a lot. That person is a British mathematician and logician Alan Turing. Alan Turing was the son of a civil servant and was born in London, England on June 23, 1912. He was educated at a top private school, Sherborne school, and studied mathematics at King’s College, at the University of Cambridge. Turing would later complete a PhD at Princeton University in America and then returned to England (Encyclopedia Britannica).
One of Turing’s specialities was computers and cryptology. After returning from America, he would work at the British Cryptanalytic Headquarter at Bletchley Park. People at this headquarter would work 24 hours a day, in shifts, to crack secret codes sent by the Germans to their allies and their frontmen to order them around the war. One of the machines that the German used was called the Enigma machine. A cypher device that was deemed unbreakable at the time.
At work, Turing was a(n) unique fellow. He would ride a bike to work while wearing a gas mask to avoid catching pollen. He had a bad chain on his bike, but instead of fixing it, he counted the time in his head before the chain would break and just seconds before it would, he would fix the bad chain. He also chained his mug to a radiator to avoid having it stolen by his colleagues (Yarnhub). He and his team at “Hut 8” (one of the offices at Bletchley), used one of the Polish-built code-breaker machines, which are kind of like early forms of the computer, that they called “Bomba” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Using this machine, they used it as one of their most vital tools to break the Enigma machines. They cracked the machine and would find out about the German naval locations, most notably their feared U-boats (Yarnhub).
All of this astonishing work has been very successful in making sure the allies win the second world war. Alan Turing’s work significantly shortened the span of the war and solved many problems that the army did not have enough time to solve for. In the end, the allies win partially thanks to Alan Turing’s machine and the future of technology, the computers and mobile phones we have now, should be thanked Alan Turing for his technology helped lay the groundwork for our technology today (Yarnhub).
The problem at the time was that Alan Turing was a homosexual, and at the time, closer to when the cold war was heating up, in most countries including the United Kingdom, homosexuality was persecuted and prosecuted. Alan Turing was eventually arrested for gross indecency and was sentenced to probation which gave him “hormone therapy” to make him incapable of having sex. He got depressed. He was barred from any more government work, and his work was even examined for fear that he may have been a Soviet spy who was blackmailed into being a homosexual. Eventually, on June 8th, 1952, Turing was found dead in his room with a half-eaten apple and a to-do list. His cause of death was suicide.
Turing inspires me because as a mathematical and science enthusiast, I find his story really intriguing, tragic and amazing. He has contributed a lot to our society today, in terms of geopolitics and technology, yet was backstabbed by his own government simply for his sexual orientation. Eventually, he was pardoned many years later and he would even get his own banknote but it is quite astonishing how cultural conformities at the time put this man in a horrid situation. After watching the imitation game movie, I fell in love with mathematics and read about his work.
I may not be a mathematical genius or homosexual, but nonetheless, I relate to him a lot. He has done incredible work for which he received very little. Specific moments that I find interesting are his thoughts on computing such as the Turing Machine, which contains fundamental tenets for a digital computer that I am using right now to write this article. His thought about computers was way beyond his time, even seeking to see if machines can think like humans. Truly an inspiration to most science enthusiasts like me.
Bibliography
Copeland, B.J.. "Alan Turing". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Jun. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alan-Turing. Accessed 12 August 2022.
Yarnhub. Alan Turing - Betrayed By The Country He Saved. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynTAFPukXBk. Accessed 11 Aug 2022.
Image Courtesy: https://nypost.com/2014/11/23/the-shocking-real-life-story-behind-the-imitation-game/
One of Turing’s specialities was computers and cryptology. After returning from America, he would work at the British Cryptanalytic Headquarter at Bletchley Park. People at this headquarter would work 24 hours a day, in shifts, to crack secret codes sent by the Germans to their allies and their frontmen to order them around the war. One of the machines that the German used was called the Enigma machine. A cypher device that was deemed unbreakable at the time.
At work, Turing was a(n) unique fellow. He would ride a bike to work while wearing a gas mask to avoid catching pollen. He had a bad chain on his bike, but instead of fixing it, he counted the time in his head before the chain would break and just seconds before it would, he would fix the bad chain. He also chained his mug to a radiator to avoid having it stolen by his colleagues (Yarnhub). He and his team at “Hut 8” (one of the offices at Bletchley), used one of the Polish-built code-breaker machines, which are kind of like early forms of the computer, that they called “Bomba” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Using this machine, they used it as one of their most vital tools to break the Enigma machines. They cracked the machine and would find out about the German naval locations, most notably their feared U-boats (Yarnhub).
All of this astonishing work has been very successful in making sure the allies win the second world war. Alan Turing’s work significantly shortened the span of the war and solved many problems that the army did not have enough time to solve for. In the end, the allies win partially thanks to Alan Turing’s machine and the future of technology, the computers and mobile phones we have now, should be thanked Alan Turing for his technology helped lay the groundwork for our technology today (Yarnhub).
The problem at the time was that Alan Turing was a homosexual, and at the time, closer to when the cold war was heating up, in most countries including the United Kingdom, homosexuality was persecuted and prosecuted. Alan Turing was eventually arrested for gross indecency and was sentenced to probation which gave him “hormone therapy” to make him incapable of having sex. He got depressed. He was barred from any more government work, and his work was even examined for fear that he may have been a Soviet spy who was blackmailed into being a homosexual. Eventually, on June 8th, 1952, Turing was found dead in his room with a half-eaten apple and a to-do list. His cause of death was suicide.
Turing inspires me because as a mathematical and science enthusiast, I find his story really intriguing, tragic and amazing. He has contributed a lot to our society today, in terms of geopolitics and technology, yet was backstabbed by his own government simply for his sexual orientation. Eventually, he was pardoned many years later and he would even get his own banknote but it is quite astonishing how cultural conformities at the time put this man in a horrid situation. After watching the imitation game movie, I fell in love with mathematics and read about his work.
I may not be a mathematical genius or homosexual, but nonetheless, I relate to him a lot. He has done incredible work for which he received very little. Specific moments that I find interesting are his thoughts on computing such as the Turing Machine, which contains fundamental tenets for a digital computer that I am using right now to write this article. His thought about computers was way beyond his time, even seeking to see if machines can think like humans. Truly an inspiration to most science enthusiasts like me.
Bibliography
Copeland, B.J.. "Alan Turing". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Jun. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alan-Turing. Accessed 12 August 2022.
Yarnhub. Alan Turing - Betrayed By The Country He Saved. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynTAFPukXBk. Accessed 11 Aug 2022.
Image Courtesy: https://nypost.com/2014/11/23/the-shocking-real-life-story-behind-the-imitation-game/
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