Alan Turing Centenary 2012 in Calgary

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS, often called the "father of computer science", was a British mathematician and pioneer of computing.  Turing is best known for his work in a number of scientific fields: he solved the Decision Problem in mathematical logic, invented the standard model of computability now called the Turing Machine, and he made seminal contributions to cryptanalysis (code breaking), to computer architecture, to the philosophy of computation and artificial intelligence, and to mathematical biology.

During WWII, Turing's work at Britain's top-secret Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma code, which helped end the war.  For his services, which remained secret throught his life, he was awarded the OBE in 1945. Turing applied his experience with electronic code-breaking machines at Bletchley Park in his post-war work on some of the very first electronic stored-program computers ever built. 

Turing was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was criminalized.  His prosecution and conviction in 1952 for "gross indecency" led to the loss of his security clearance.  Turing chose chemical castration instead of imprisonment as his sentence, and died in 1954 of an apparent suicide.

Turing was born on June 23, 1912.  The Departments of Computer Science and Philosophy, with support from the Faculties of Arts and Science and the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, marked Turing's centenary with a series of events throughout 2012.  The lectures were aimed at a general audience and are open to the public.  You can watch them on mathtube.