Page 138 - Literati Bytes
P. 138

My Hero : Alan Turing  He worked very hard during that time. He didn’t eat, didn’t

               sleep, worked 24/7, literally. His team worked too. It was

               an almost impossible task and when they did not get


 Alan Turing is an English mathematician, computer  immediate outcomes in the beginning, they were asked to

 scientist, logician, cryptanologist, philosopher and  shut down. But they begged for a little more time and then

 theoretical biologist. He took a leading role in breaking Nazi  finally succeeded in cracking the enigma code from the

 ciphers during WWII. English scientist Alan Turing was born  enigma machine of the Germans. He reduced the war by

 on June 23,1912 in Maida Vale, London, England. As he grew  almost 2 years, and saved millions of lives and further
 up, his special intellect helped this world in many ways. He  destruction of property. Without him, this code breaking


 proved many theorems, and made discoveries in the field of  would have taken much more time or wouldn’t have
 maths and physics.  happened at all. He made many notable contributions and

 In 1936, Turing delivered a paper ‘Oncomputable  his ground breaking discoveries has been used by tech

 numbers’ with an application to the ‘Entscheidungs problem’  companies for years.

 in which he presented the notion of a universal machine  Homosexuality was illegal in the UK in early 1950s. So

 (later called the Universal Turing machine) capable of  when he admitted to the police, that he’d had a relationship

 computing anything that is computable. It is considered the  with the perpetrator, 19 year old Andy Murray, he was

 persecutor of the modern computer. All the present  charged with gross indecency. Following his arrest, he was

 computers are said to be an incarnation of Turing’s  forced to choose between temporary probation on the

 machine.      condition that he receive hormonal treatment for libido

 During WWII, Turing was a leading participant in wartime  reduction or imprisonment. He chose the former and soon

 code-breaking , particularly that of German ciphers. He  underwent chemical castration through injections of a

 worked at Bletchley Park, the GCCS wartime station where  synthetic oestrogen hormone for a year, which was

 he made five major advances in the field of cryptanalysis,  excruciatingly painful not only physically, but it also

 including specifying the bombe, an electromechanical  adversely affected his mental health. As a result of his

 device used to help decipher German Enigma encrypted  conviction, he was barred from work. He died on June 7,
 signals.      1954.it was said the cause of death was cyanide poisoning
               and was ruled a suicide.
   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143