Alan Turing

Based on this wikipedia entry you will, in your own words, summarize his most important contributions and the most significant or interesting parts of his life. Also he has influenced film and books, try to find out about them too.

Also, try to google and find the urban myth on how his death came to influence Apple, the Apple logo, and the Macintosh.

Post as a comment below.

Links of interest:

History of cryptography

Did Alan Turing inspire the Apple logo?

The Royal prerogative of mercy

Enigma machine

The book: Cryptonomicon


How does encryption work today on computers, for instance when you buy something on (How long is a safe encryption key? How doe they work? How long does it take to ”brute force”-decrypt a safe key?)

19 reaktioner till “Alan Turing”

  1. Alan Turing was a great computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist. He was a member in the Government Code and Cypher School who had a mission in the second war. The mission was to break Germanys ciphers. They have calculated that by successfully breaking the code they shorted the war by two to four years.
    When they succeeded it were written in the history books and now in morden culture they made a movie to re gaze that moment that not everyone was familiar with. The Imitation Game was the name of the successfully film who have a rating of 8,1 out of 10 in the imb. There´s also 3 other older movies about the same subject with the names Enigma, All of the queen´s men and U-571.
    There´s of course a book about this to with the name Alan Turing:The Enigma. I have read a review of the book and surprising enough he liked the book and choose to give it a rating of 7 out of 10.
    A lot of people think that there´s some sort of connection between the apple logo and Alan turings death, cause Alan turing died by biting a cyanide apple. A lot of people think it was suicide or that Apple is pulling the strings.


  2. Alan Turing was a British cryptographer who assisted Great Brittan during World War II. His expertise helped with the ending of the war greatly. Some say his work shortened the war by almost 4 years. Alan helped decipher the enigma code that the nazis used for communication. Alan showed already as a child his deep understanding for science and mathematics. At only the age of 16 Turing was able to understand and possibly deduce Albert Einsteins theory about newtons laws of motion. After the world war Turing studied computers and was a huge contribution to modern day artificial intelligence and computer science. Unfortunately during his last years he was convicted for homosexuality and took his own life. Turing died of cyanide poison, beside his corpse there was an apple which he had taken a bite out of. In modern day this apple has turned into an urban myth, this apple is supposedly what gave apple their logo. As a way to show respect to this great scientist who helped modern day science.


  3. In his young age he proved being outstanding at math. He could solve advanced mathematical problems without being given the chance to learn the solutions in beforehand. He invented a machine that helped solving the Nazi enigma code.
    He was also a homosexual which was classed as an illness at the time.
    He most probably died from a poisoned apple which he only took a bite of. That is probably the reason for the apple logo today. It could have been a suicide but his mother argumented against that possibility and said it must have been his careless storage of chemicals that caused his early death.
    There is a book about him called Alan Turing: The enigma which inspired the moviemakers to The imitation game(2014).


  4. Alan Turing made Turing machine which is the basic model for computer. He also developed Turing test. In WWII he was breaking codes which came from Germany. He devised several techniques to break those codes.
    Many people think that Alan Turing was the inspiration for Apple logo because he died after biting poisoned apple.


  5. Alan Turinger was the man who broke the Enigma code, This was an encryption machine build by the Germans during the second world war. By breaking Enigma it was thought that world war 2 was shortened by two years and saved millions of lives. Later in his life the UK government found out that he was gay, as this was illegal at the time he had to choose between hormon treatment or go to prison. He didn’t want to stop working on his machines so he chose to take the hormon treatment.

    1954 he was found dead in his apartment, he died of cyanide poisoning, it has been thought to be a suicide, but some people thought that he might have inhaled cyanide or even that the government killed him because they saw him as a threat, because he was gay. This lead many to believe that he inspired the apple logo, as this story reminds many of ”Snow white”, but there is even more proof to the theory. At his desk, when he died they found a half eaten apple.

    In the last few years there have been a lot of movies about Alan Turing for example there was a movie about the time he broke the Enigma, this movie was ”The imitation game”. The name of this movie comes from an article he wrote named just that. There have been a lot of more movies about him and the reason might be that he was such a strange character and this is probably the reason he was so successful.


  6. Alan Turings most important contribution in his life is surely in world war 2 when he decrypted germans coded messages and other stuff. Like helping manchester develop the manchester computers. the interesting part may be the way he died. If the apple wasn’t there when he died maybe they never was gonna use the apple logo or name that we have today. it could have another name.

    disney have re-acted the death scene of Alan Turings in the snow white and the seven dwarfs where she dies/goes to sleep by an apple like Alan.

    Alan is like the father of the computers and they wanted something to remember him by i guess and used the apple that killed him they herd as a name and a logo.


  7. Encryption is a way to kinda put a lock on something on the internet and only you have the key to open it.
    Can be great if you wanna send your object to e.x amazon to sell it.
    You encryption your object when its sending to the amazon so no one can just download the object and take it, they need to unencryption it first and that will take a lot of time, even Alan turing have problems.
    That way you can be relaxed when selling items/object on big selling webb places.


  8. Alan Turing

    One of Turing’s most important contributions was that he managed to come up with a few methods that broke the German cyphers during the Second World War.
    After the war he developed ACE (automatic computer engine) and later the Manchester computers.

    It is speculated that Turing used an apple that had been injected with cyanide to commit suicide, this may have inspired the apple logo since it is an apple that has been bitten only once.


  9. Alan Turing was the man who broke into the Enigma code and invented the computer. This was an machine, which was built by the germans during the second world war. By breaking the Enigma code Alan Turing saved millions of lives. Later in UK the government found out that he was homosexual, as it was illegal in his age. He had to chose between homosexual treatment or go to prison. He didn’t want to stop working on his machines, so he had to chosen to take homosexual treatment.
    In 1954 he was found dead in his apartment, he died of cyanide poison, the people thought it was a suicide. But, some people thought that he might have inhaled cyanide or even the government killed him because he was gay. This lead to many believe that he inspired steve jobs’s apple logo, as this story reminds many about the Snow white.

    There is a book about Alan Turing: The Engima. I checked the rating of this book and I’m surprised how many people like his book. They made a movie about the book.



  10. Turning was computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist.
    turing worked for GC&CS, and his mission was to crack the german code, and he played a big roll when they cracked the german code and because of that won more battles against the Nazis and if he didn’t cracked the code then the war would have been 2-4 years longer.
    They are two movies who is about Turning the first one is Codebreaker and The Imitation Game its about turning while he his trying the crack the enigma code.
    There are many people who believe that when Turning died bye eating a apple with cyanide and the half of the apple was left, people thinker then that apple wanted to honor him the father of the computers by having the half bitten apple as their logo


  11. Alan Turing was born 1912 in London, England. During the second world war he worked for Britain’s code breaking centre. There he tried to break the german naval encryption code which the germans used to send encrypted messages between ships and the german government. Turing decoded many of the messages the germans sent and helped the allies win the war. It’s also estimated that his work shortened the war with 2-4 years.

    After the war he worked at a computing lab at the University of Manchester. At the university he designed the Manchester computers, which was the first working stored-program computer. At the university he also became interested in mathematical biology and he wrote a series of papers on the subject. One of the papers predicted oscillating chemical reactions, including the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction which was first observed in the 1960s after Turings death.

    Alan Turing was a homosexual while it still was illegal in the UK. He was prosecuted in 1952 and got to choose his punishment. His choices was chemical castration or prison. He didn’t want to go to prison where he couldn’t work so he had to choose castration. Alan died 1954 to cyanide poisoning. It’s wildly regarded as a suicide but some people, including his mother, thinks it was an accidental death because his work included handling cyanide.

    According to urban legends the apple logo is inspired by Alan Turings death. Alan died by cyanide poisoning after taking a bite from an apple injected with this lethal substance. The apple logo is depicting an apple with a bite in it.


    Today the web uses SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). 1. The website sends a ”Key” with a certificate. The browser then checks if the certificate was sent by a trusted website. 2. The browser then uses the key to encrypt a random symmetric encryption key and sends it to the website with the encrypted URL required as well as other encrypted data. 3. The website decrypts the symmetric encryption key using its private key and uses the browser’s symmetric key to decrypt its URL and data. 4. The website sends the requested data and information encrypted to the browser. 5. The browser decrypts the data and displays the requested information.



    Today Alan Turing may best be known for his work at Bletchley Park during World War II, and his part of breaking the german Enigma code. But Alan Turing was also a great computer scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist.

    It’s said that he was killed by an appel witch contained cyanide and that’s why people say he inspired the apple logo.


  13. He traveled around the isle to pursue his career in math and physics but when WWII started, he reported in to GC&CS, the british code breaking organisation. At his time there his main objective was to break the germans ”Enigma machine”. He completed this work and they knew exactly what the germans was going/able to do. This was probably one of the factors that made the western front be able to push the nazis back. They did this with the computer ”Bombe”. The Bombes main objective were to search for possible correct settings used for an Enigma message (i.e., rotor order, rotor settings and plugboard settings) using a fragment of probable plaintext.

    Before this time, in 1936, he came up with one of the first general purpose computers the ”Turing Machine”. The machine were able algorithms , understand logic and read input through tapes to turn it to output.

    The Turing test is a test, developed in 1950, of a machine’s ability to replicate the behavior or equivalent to that of a human (Artificial Intelligence). Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine that is designed to generate human-like responses.

    In 1952 he became prosecuted of being homosexual. At this time it were still a crime. He accepted chemical castration
    instead of jail. The house of Commons has gone out and apologized to Alan Turing about this matter after a petition were handed in.

    Alan Turing is one of the most famous people of WWII. He has gotten at least one big grossing Hollywood film with Bendickt Cumberbatch in the main roll, it were released in 2014. He has also gotten a smaller movie about him called Decoding.

    Alan Turing lived a short life for a human being of the 20th century, he became 52 years old after a cyanide poisoning. On his bedside table there was a half-eaten apple which conspired as the main charge of his death. It’s also speculated that it is from here Apple has gotten their logo.


  14. Alan Turing

    Alan Mathison Turing was a british computer scientist, mathematician, logician cryptanalyst and theoretical biologist. Alan Turing was born 23 June 1912 and died 7 June 1954 at the age of 41.
    Turing is considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. During the Second World War, Turing worked for Britain’s code breaking centre. He created a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers. He also made improvements to a polish bombe, which is an electromechanical machine that could help break Enigma, which is a German encryption machine. It has been estimated that Turing’s work in cracking intercepted coded messages sent from the Nazis shortened the war in Europe by two to four years.

    In the year 1952, Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts. Such behaviour was a criminal act in the UK during those years. He accepted treatment which was an alternative to prison. The treatment was chemical castration.

    Turing died 1954 from cyanide poisoning. It was determined that he had committed suicide, although a professor later provided an alternate explanation of it being an accident.


  15. Turing worked during world war 2 at the ”Government code and Cypher school”. That was the British code breaking center. During some of his time at the school he led the division that was responsible for breaking naval code, it was called Hut 8.

    He also developed techniques for breaking code, including machines that could find settings for the nazis enigma machine. He managed with these techniques and machines to get hold of a message that turned the tides for his side during the battle of the atlantic.

    By him getting hold of this information and much more experts estimated that he manage to shorten the war by two to four years which stopped at least another 8 million from dying of the war had continued at the same pace.

    And on top of his heroic acts during the war he also was a scientist in many fields, where his history in theoretical computing, the actual math behind computers, was where he had most of his success.

    His invention the ”Turing machine”(1936) was a great breakthrough as it is seen as the first general purpose computer being able to read logic, algorithms and input through a tape with marks in it, and turn it into output following the rules set by the logic.

    After the war he started working at the ”National Physical Laboratory”. There he designed ACE. That was one of the first computers that could actually store programs. Then he went on to the ”University of Manchester” where he worked together with others on the ”Manchester Computer” which aim was to help and experiment on how computers could solve mathematical problems.

    1952 though he was prosecuted for being homosexual and decided to instead of going to prison that he would take a drug that castrated him. He died from cyanide poisoning that was thought to be suicide even though evidence can also prove accidental poisoning.

    British Prime Gordon Brown made an public apology 2009 and after an internet petition. Even Queen Elizabeth gave him a Posthumos Pardon 2013.

    His life have inspired books and film alike. An example of a movie is ”The imitation Game”.

    There is a theory regarding Turing and the Apple logo is that Turing took a bite of a cyanide poisoned apple(his suicide) and that the Apple logo should be a representation of that apple.

    Encryption works by having prime two big prime numbers multiplied by each other and using that number as a ”pin-code”. trying to brute force one of this keys can take upwards of hunders of years if not impossible to do before the task becomes obsolete.


  16. Alan Turing
    Alan Turing contributed heavily in the war against the Nazis, where he worked for the GC&CS, Britain’s codebreaking centre at the time. He made the first breakthroughs with the Naval Enigma code, which allowed Britain’s food and supplies to be shipped accross the Atlantic.
    He also, along with Gordon Welchman, designed a machine to break the Enigma cypher. The Enigma was Germany’s cypher machine. They succeeded and made the ”Bombe”, it helped them decypher Germany’s codes.
    Their work is said to have shortened the war in Europe for about 2-4 years.

    After the war he started working at the National Physical Laboraty where he designed the ACE. The ACE was among the first designs for a stored-program computer.
    He later joined Max Newman’s Computing Laboratory where he helped develop the Manchester computers.
    Alan contributed heavily in computer science, and hence he’s considered the ”Father of Computer Science”.

    The most significant part of his life was probably his school life, it helped him hone his genius.

    The myth about the Apple Logo and such being based on Alan Turing is probably there because of the fact that he died by biting into a cyanide coated apple, and the Apple Logo is a bitten apple.


  17. Alan Mathieson Turing – born June 23th 1912 and died June 7th 1954
    He is considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
    During the 2nd world war, Turing worked for the British government trying to break german codes were he came up with a number of different methods used to break the codes. Turing’s success in breaking the german codes is said to have shortened the war as many as two to four years.
    After the war had ended Alan Turing designed the ACE which stands for Automated Computing Engine for the National Physical Laboratory.
    He was accused and prosecuted for homosexual acts and accepted treatment with DES instead of prison. He died in 1954 biting an apple filled with cyanide and thats where the Apple logo come from.


  18. A few years after the end of the world war two he worked at the National Physical Laboratory where he design the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE).
    He later joined Max Newman´s Computing Laboratory and helped them develop the Manchester computers.
    He was procecuted for homosexual acts in 1952 when that still was a criminal act in the UK. He accepted castration as an alternative to prison. He died two years later from cyanide poisoning.
    There have been some movies about Alan Turing. For example from the time he broke the Enigma. The movie is inspired by the strange guy Alan Turing and he´s success.
    Alan Turing died by cyanide poisoning. At first it was thought as a suicide but some thought that he might got killed by the government because he was seen as a threat. One the bedside table there was a half-eaten apple filled with the poison. It´s also speculated that Apple got their inspiration from that apple




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