Alan Turing

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Alan Turing
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Alan Turing

Alan Mathison Turing (June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954) worked with maths and computers. He lived in England.

He was one of the first people to work with modern digital computers. He was the first person to think of using a computer for different things. He told people that computers could run different programs. Turing introduced the idea of a Turing machine in 1936. The machine was imaginary, and ran a set of commands. You could think about problems of computation using this machine as a metaphor.

Turing also thought of the Turing test.

Alan Turing was a gay man. In 1952, Turing admitted having sex with a man. At that time in England, homosexuality was a crime. He was tried and convicted of this crime in a British court. and was forced to make a choice. He had to choose between going to jail or "chemical castration" (taking female hormones like estrogen to lower his sex drive). He chose the hormones. But this made him impotent (unable to have sex) and made him grow breasts. After suffering these effects for two years, he committed suicide (killed himself) with cyanide in 1954.

This kind of treatment is now believed to be very wrong, going against medical ethics and international laws of human rights, and malpractice by most doctors.