Picture of Alan Turing smiling

Alan Turing

(1912-1954)

Webpage organized and mantained by Luis Menasché My e-mail address

Materials developed by me

  1. Seminar developed and presented by me about the life and scienfific contributions of Alan Turing (presented in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, in the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, also in Rio de Janeiro, and virtually):
    1. Slides of the Seminar (updated in 11/2021)
    2. Video of the presentation made with Google Meet in May 28th 2020
    3. Video of the presentation made in the National Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics in February 24th 2015
  2. Movie review written by me for the magazine "Ciência Hoje" ("Science Today") of March 2015 about Alan Turing and the movie "The Imitation Game"

Articles and books

  1. Artigos written by Alan Turing:
    1. "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Ent­scheidungs­pro­blem" (1936)

      Article in which Turing presents four fundamental points of the Theory of Computation:

      1. Formalization of a "mechanical procedure", or an algorithm, as a task that can be executed by a Turing Machine.
      2. Presentation of the Universal Turing Machine, a Turing Machine that is capable of simulating the behavior of any other Turing Machine.
      3. Proof that there are problems that are not algorithmically solvable, showing that the Halting Problem is one of these problems.
      4. Proof (in the appendix) that his model of the Turing Machine is completely equivalent to Church's Lambda-Calculus model.
    2. "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals" (1938)

      Turing's PhD thesis.

    3. "Visit to National Cash Register Corporation of Dayton, Ohio" (1942)

      Report written by Turing about his visit to the USA to observe the construction of Bombe machines by the americans.

    4. "Rounding-Off Errors in Matrix Processes" (1947)

      Article in which Turing presents the LU matrix decomposition.

    5. Manual of the Ferranti Mark 1 Computer (1950)

      The Ferranti Mark 1 was the first computer commercially available and was developed from a project of the University of Manchester. This manual contains comments and informations about the historical context added by the author of the transcription.

    6. "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (1950)

      Article in which Turing presents the Turing Test of Artificial Intelligence.

    7. "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" (1952)

      Article in which Turing presents his model of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) to describe the formation of spatial patterns in biological tissues.

  2. Articles written about Alan Turing:
    1. Generical Articles:
      1. "The Incomputable Alan Turing" - S. Barry Cooper (2004)
      2. "Incomputability after Alan Turing" - S. Barry Cooper (2012)
      3. "A Celebration of Alan Turing's Achievements in the Year of His Centenary" - Edward Hermann Haeusler (2012)
      4. "Alan and I" - Christos H. Papadimitriou (2012)
    2. Articles about Turing's work in morphogenesis:
      1. "Watching the Daisies Grow: Turing and Fibonacci Phyllotaxis" - Jonathan Swinton (2003)
      2. "The Impact of Turing's Work on Pattern Formation in Biology" - Philip K. Maini (2004)
      3. "The Turing Model Comes of Molecular Age" - Philip K. Maini, Ruth E. Baker and Cheng-Ming Chuong (2006)
      4. "Alan Turing's Patterns in Nature, and Beyond" - Brandon Keim (Wired Magazine, 2011)
      5. "Turing's Mathematical Theory of Morphogenesis" - Philip K. Maini (2012)
      6. "Hox Genes Regulate Digit Patterning by Controlling the Wavelength of a Turing-Type Mechanism" - R. Sheth, L. Marcon, M. F. Bastida, M. Junco, L. Quintana, R. Dahn, M. Kmita, J. Sharpe, M. A. Ros (2012)
      7. "Testing Turing’s theory of morphogenesis in chemical cells" - Nathan Tompkins, Ning Li, Camille Girabawe, Michael Heymann, G. Bard Ermentrout, Irving R. Epstein, and Seth Fraden (2014)
  3. Biographical books about Alan Turing:
    1. "Alan M. Turing", by Sara Turing, Alan's mother (1959, updated in 2012).
    2. "Alan Turing: the Enigma", by Andrew Hodges (1983, updated in 2014).
    3. "The Man Who Knew Too Much", by David Leavitt (2006).
    4. "Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age", by B. Jack Copeland (2012).
    5. "Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma", by David Boyle (2014).
    6. "Prof: Alan Turing Decoded", by Dermot Turing, Alan's nephew (2015).
  4. Scientific books about Alan Turing:
    1. "The Essential Turing: Seminal Writings", edited by B. Jack Copeland (2004).
    2. "The Annotated Turing", edited by Charles Petzold (2008)
    3. "Alan Turing: His Work and Impact", edited by S. Barry Cooper and J. van Leeuwen (2013).
    4. "The Once and Future Turing: Computing the World", edited by S. Barry Cooper and Andrew Hodges (2016).

Movies about Alan Turing (in reverse chronological order)

  1. "The Imitation Game" (2014):
  2. "Codebreaker" (2011):
  3. "Breaking the Code" (1996):

Turing Machine implementations

  1. Implementation with pen, paper and reels.
  2. Implementation done with Lego.
  3. Simulator done with JavaScript.

Important places in Turing's life

  1. 1912 (Birth): Hotel that currently functions in the house where Alan Turing was born (Address: 2 Warrington Crescent, London)
  2. 1926-1931 (Youth): Webpage with a list of "famous" ex-students of Sherborne School
  3. 1939-1945 (Work with Cryptography): Website of Bletchley Park (currently transformed in a museum)

Alan Turing's legacy

  1. 1966 (Tribute): Creation of the Turing Award by the ACM (given annually ever since)
  2. 1996 (Movie): "Breaking the Code"
  3. 2009-2017 (The Path to Pardon):
    1. Public apology made by Gordon Brown (then UK Prime-Minister) in 2009 in the name of the British Government for the bad treatment given to Turing: page 1 and page 2
    2. Royal pardon given by the Queen Elizabeth II to Alan Turing in the Christmas of 2013.
    3. Part of the "Policing and Crime Act 2017", sanctioned by Queen Elizabeth II in January 31st 2017, which contains the so called "Alan Turing Law" extending pardon to all men (around 50 thousand) found guilty of crimes analogous to the one attributed to Turing.
  4. 2011 (Movie): "Codebreaker"
  5. 2012 (Centenary of Birth): Events of the "Alan Turing Year"
  6. 2014 (Musical): "A Man from the Future" (Pet Shop Boys)
  7. 2014 (Movie): "The Imitation Game"
  8. 2019 (Tribute): 50 Pound bill in tribute to Turing (announced in 2019 and put in circulation in June 23rd 2021, Turing's birthday)
  9. 2021 (Tribute): Series of coding puzzles in celebration of the new 50 Pound bill, made available by GCHQ, contemporary successor of the Intelligence service where Turing worked during the Second World War
  10. 2021 (Tribute): Piece of art put on display in GCHQ's headquarters

Events of the "Alan Turing Year" (2012, centenary of his birth)

  1. Website of the "Alan Turing Year"
  2. Website of the "Turing Centenary Conference" in the University of Cambridge
  3. "Turing Centenary Conference" in the Universidade of Manchester:
    1. Website
    2. Recording of the presentations
  4. "Turing Centenary Celebration" in the ACM:
    1. Website
    2. Recording of the presentations
  5. Website of the "Alan Turing Centenary" in the University of Calgary
  6. Website of the "Alan Turing: Centenary Lectures" in the University of Oxford
  7. Videos produced by the french CNRS for the ocasion of Turing's centenary:
    1. Alan Turing
    2. Turing Machine
  8. Exposition about Turing in the Science Museum of London
  9. Series of five articles ordered by the BBC about the life and work of Alan Turing for the ocasion of his centenary:
    1. Article by Vint Cerf (winner of the Turing Award)
    2. Article by Jack Copeland (Turing's biographer)
    3. Article by Simon Lavington (historian of computers)
    4. Article by Noel Sharkey (artificial intelligence researcher)
    5. Article by Andrew Hodges (Turing's biographer)
  10. Google's doodle in tribute to Turing's centenary (a Turing Machine):
    1. Visualization
    2. Source code (JavaScript)

Other materials about Alan Turing

  1. Websites with biographical materials:
    1. Website with a lot of informations about Turing mantained by Professor Andrew Hodges, author of the biography "Alan Turing: the Enigma"
    2. Digital archive with letters, manuscripts, photos and other documents related to Turing's life
    3. Another digital archive with a lot of informations about Turing and his many contributions
    4. Public plaques in memory of Turing
  2. Encyclopedias:
    1. Turing in the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"
    2. Turing in Wikipedia