Scientist Alan Turing. The Turing test: what is it and why is it so difficult to pass? Alan Turing. Founder of the theory of artificial intelligence
The released film “The Imitation Game”, in which the main character, Alan Turing, played Benedict Cumberbatch, makes us take a fresh look at the fate of the brilliant British scientist. Turing, who managed to overtake time in science, remained its prisoner in life. The apple into which he injected the fatal potassium cyanide could have become as symbolic of the law of human gravitation as Newton’s apple is of the universal
Photo: DR
Julius Turing, although he came from an old Scottish aristocratic family, most spent his life in India. His father, a general in the British Indian Army, served here in Bengal. Julius followed the civilian line - he worked in the colonial administration of the city of Chhatrapur. In this town on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, he met his future wife, Ethel Sarah Stoney, an Irishwoman, the daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras railways, who grew up, like him, in India. However, when Ethel became pregnant after the wedding, the newlyweds unanimously decided that it would be better for their children not to have anything to do with India.
Ethel gave birth to her first child, John, in London. Alan Mathieson Turing was born there on June 23, 1912. The boys were raised by London relatives: Julius Turing received a new assignment, and the couple returned to India.
From a young age, little Alan was not like his peers: having learned to read at the age of 6, he adored popular science books, and at the age of 11 he became interested in chemical experiments. It all started when one of his relatives gave him a book called: “Wonders of Nature Every Child Should Know About.” Alan showed no interest in studying the law of God, literature and history, but at the age of fifteen he independently understood the theory of relativity. He enthusiastically found a way out of the most difficult situations. Knowing that he was confusing left and right, Alan painted a red dot on thumb left hand– now he was oriented in space no worse than other guys. And soon he was already superior to adults in many ways. So one day, during a picnic in Scotland, in order to earn his father's approval, he found wild honey. It turned out like this: Alan traced the lines along which the bees flew, as well as the direction of their flights, and then, extending these lines, found the point where they intersected - there was a hollow with honey. Mrs Turing was worried that she was so unusual child will not be able to enter a prestigious school, but everything worked out: when the time came, Alan became a student at the privileged Sherborne School, where children from families of their circle studied.
During class, Alan yawned from boredom, but free time He did what really fascinated him - mathematics, physics and chemistry. It was not easy for the teachers to deal with him. One day Mrs. Turing received a letter from the school administration, where she read the following: “Your son apparently wants to become a scientist - perhaps a mathematician. Students like him come along once every two hundred years. But what did he forget at our school?
In 1931 Alan entered King's College, Cambridge University. Here he found what he was looking for: freedom, liberal traditions, people with whom he could discuss what worried him. He also went in for sports - rowing and running.
Mrs. Turing expected that sooner or later her boy would bring a young charming girl into their home, whom he would call his wife and who would give birth to successors to the glorious Turing family. But... Alan realized quite early that girls were not attracted to him at all, and he came to terms with this state of affairs. However, he regularly wrote to his mother about parties at which he communicated with nice and intelligent young ladies.
When Alan was 17, he met Christopher Morcom, who was also studying at Cambridge. Morcom was a little older than Alan, but this did not stop them from reading books on physics and mathematics together, discussing the problems of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. “As a rule, we did not see eye to eye, which only made things more interesting,” Alan wrote. But it soon turned out that Morcom was seriously ill - he had tuberculosis. A few months after they met, he died. It was a terrible loss - never before had Alan had such a close, understanding friend. And he decided that he would definitely do what his friend did not have the chance to do. Alan wrote to his mother: “There was some work that we had to do together. Now I have to do everything alone."
Turing always stood out from the crowd: he dressed the way he was comfortable, did not care about decency, and was sometimes very eccentric. In Cambridge they said that he never used precise time signals, but set his alarm clock by making some calculations that only he could understand. Putting chemical experiments, he came up with a game for himself " Desert Island", obtaining the substances necessary in life from everything that was at hand - from washing powder, dishwashing detergents and the like. But what occupied him most was mathematics. He read von Neumann’s “Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics” and thought about the problems of mathematical logic formulated by another great mathematician of the 20th century, David Hilbert.
In 1934, Turing graduated from the university with flying colors. One of his works, devoted to the theory of probability, was awarded a special prize, and he was elected to the college scientific society. It seemed that a completely prosperous career as a university mathematics teacher awaited him, but Alan was attracted by completely different horizons. During these years he begins to develop his theory, thanks to which his name will forever remain history of science,– the theory of the “Turing Machine”. This theory of logical computers will later be included in all textbooks on the theory of computation and mathematical logic. The “Turing machine” created by his imagination could solve a variety of problems; you just had to give it the right algorithm and break down the solution into simple, elementary steps. Moreover, when switching to a new task, Alan’s machine did not need to rebuild its insides; it did it itself in accordance with the algorithm given to it. Well, this algorithm was set by a person. Turing expressed all these amazing ideas, which formed the basis of computer science and computer theory, in the article “Computable Numbers with Application to the Solvability Problem.”
Articles about Hilbert's problem brought Alan fame in the scientific world, and in 1936 he was invited to the famous American Princeton University, where the brilliant mathematician John von Neumann taught, the same one whose work Alan studied with such zeal at Cambridge. Alan really hoped that he would meet his soul mate in Neumann, but the professor turned out to be a great lover of life - he enthusiastically attended parties and did not miss a single cocktail. Focused, serious Alan did not find understanding and, disappointed, returned to England.
This was in 1938. The British "policy of appeasement" towards Hitler did not bring results. The Commonwealth was preparing for war. In the south of England, on the Bletchley Park estate, there is a school of codes and ciphers: the hunt for secret information in advance German troops became a vital necessity. Turing was periodically involved in work carried out by Bletchley Park specialists. After England officially entered the war on September 3, 1939, he devoted himself entirely to deciphering German codes and ciphers.
A variety of people gathered at Bletchley Park, but all of them were talented and full of desire to work. There were serious scientists who had escaped the suffocating atmosphere of ancient universities, crossword puzzle experts, naval officers, and chess players. Turing felt comfortable among them. He always tried to find practical use his most extravagant theories - and here, on the Bletchley Park estate, among the cricket grounds of the red stone editions, he had such an opportunity. At first, Turing was assigned to a group involved in breaking the codes of the Enigma encryption machine, which was used by a number of German ground and naval units. It took him only a few weeks to develop a decryption technique. Soon Turing was already the head of the department responsible for deciphering all the codes of the German navy.
Photo: DR
At the end of 1940, Britain found itself in a most dangerous situation - the country was threatened with famine. The fact is that German submarines successfully sank ships of the Atlantic convoy carrying food to the British Isles. Turing's department needed to create a device that at least partially duplicated the work of German cipher machines, and he created such a device. It used gears, punched paper tape, and simple electrical circuits. And they simply called it “Bomb”. This device could not yet be called a computer, because its operation required quite a lot of people - at first dozens, and then even hundreds. “Bomb” worked thanks to the young, pretty women called up to serve in the Women's Auxiliary Service of the Navy. But by combining these ladies and mechanical and electrical devices into a single whole, Turing received some semblance of the machine that he had been thinking about even before the war. The combination of "women plus the electrical circuits they control" was, in a sense, computer hardware. There was memory and a processor that allowed software reconfiguration, only this machine consisted of women, electrical wires and the powerful intellect of Turing. When from outside world new data arrived, that is, when the Germans switched to new system coding, Turing simply “reprogrammed” his “machine.”
Photo: DR
At first, everything did not go as desired. Very often, the “Bomb” failed to decipher the messages it received in time, and the British convoys died, and the sailors who sailed on them drowned. But then the “Bomb” increasingly began to achieve success, saving British ships and the lives of the British...
And at this time Turing, one might say, fell in love. His chosen one - this time it was the chosen one - Joan Clarke studied at the Faculty of Mathematics at Cambridge and came to Bletchley Park to work in the Turing department. He immediately announced his homosexuality to her, which did not stop them from spending a lot of time together discussing problems modern science. Joan was not at all embarrassed by his statements: she liked this young man who had already achieved so much, liked his sharp mind, humor, and spiritual vulnerability.
In February 1942, the German navy switched to a new coding system. Bletchley Park did not provide the necessary information about the movements of Nazi submarines, and radars installed on aircraft did not help. Turing was terribly nervous - nothing was working for him. The British government decided to allocate additional funds for work at Bletchley, and Turing moved even closer to his dream machine - he built the Colossus. When this machine was running, its hundreds of kilometers of cables generated so much heat that the women who switched the plugs asked all the men to leave the premises. The ladies took off everything unnecessary - it was so hot!
"Colossus" did what "Bomb" could not do. Turing and his team made a huge contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany. And this was well understood in Downing Street. So, one day, when Turing sent a letter to the government demanding immediate delivery necessary materials, Churchill gave the chief of his services the order: “Today! Make sure they get everything they need as a matter of priority.”
At Bletchley, Turing was considered a genius. Dressed haphazardly, without a tie, often wearing shoes on his bare feet, clumsy, immersed in his thoughts, and not distinguished by brilliant manners, he was everyone’s favorite. Turing could not stand ignoramuses and careerists, but his own best employees appreciated, but at the same time sometimes demanded the simply impossible from them. His authority was unquestioned, and at the end of 1942 he was even sent to the United States to represent Great Britain in ensuring encryption of negotiations between Roosevelt and Churchill. He was engaged in this responsible work until March 1943.
Photo: DR
Turing's services to his homeland were so great that he was even awarded the Order of the British Empire. It was a great honor.
Turing did not seem to notice the end of the war: he was completely immersed in the work of creating a thinking machine. On one of his last evenings at Bletchley, while compiling a progress report with Joan, he told her that he had managed to convince the leaders of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) to create a group that would build his machine. His project was called “Automatic Computing Engine”. However, Joan refused to participate in the new project. She decided that being the faithful companion of a homosexual was not the best option for her.
However, this was no longer important to Turing - he was full of ideas about how he would make his thinking machine. The NFL was led by Charles Darwin, grandson of the great Darwin. He was not an outstanding scientist, but he was rightfully considered an excellent administrator. He listened with understanding to Turing when he said that he needed vacuum tubes and relays, was bored when he talked about pure mathematics, and thought he was crazy when Turing expressed his ideas about an intelligent machine. But Turing still began to work. Only he couldn’t do anything - he was hampered by the fact that he didn’t have small switches, because there were no transistors then.
Two years passed, and Turing did not have any decent results. He had to move to Manchester, where similar work was also carried out. Ideas were in the air, and several groups in England itself, as well as groups in the USA, were already creating computers, and the Americans overtook the British on this path. But nothing worked out for him in Manchester either. The engineers and mathematicians there, firstly, had their own ideas about what needed to be done, and secondly, did not accept the aristocrat Turing with his Cambridge accent into their circle. The days of Bletchley, when everyone worked together to win, are a thing of the past...
Turing always worked hard - he wrote articles and gave lectures in Manchester. He was well known. He could probably easily return to Cambridge and teach there, but he didn’t want that! Turing found himself alone. I tried to study pure mathematics, but quickly realized that I was too old for this. And then he began to be occupied with philosophical problems - he took up the theory of morphogenesis, and then wrote an article on artificial intelligence and the nature of self-knowledge, “Computing Machines and the Mind,” published in the journal Mind and recognized as a classic a few years after his death. But he was too ahead of his time. Then, in the late 1940s, no one understood him... His mother continued to send him letters, asking when he would get married. What could he answer her? Only that she is looking for a worthy daughter-in-law...
In desperation, Turing took up running - he had always respected sports, but now it was as if he was running away from himself. At one time he was considered the best marathon runner in Britain and was even supposed to be included in the country's Olympic team, but in 1952 he sprained his leg and quit running.
After Morcom, he never found true love - he was content with casual relationships. And one day everything ended badly. In January 1952, Turing's house was robbed. Alan realized that the young worker he had met the day before was probably involved. Offended and disappointed in people, he turned to the police. This was a terrible mistake. The robber was detained, but he gladly told the investigation about Turing’s unconventional hobbies. Perhaps, if this story had happened in Cambridge, Turing would have gotten away with an official reprimand, if in London - with a short imprisonment. A couple of years later, the same story happened to the famous actor John Gielgud - he was arrested, but numerous friends stood up for him, and Gielgud was released. But Turing lived in conservative Manchester, where homosexuality was considered a terrible crime. And on March 31, Turing appeared in court. He was helped by wartime merits and high government awards. The punishment was not imprisonment, but forced treatment - suppression of libido through injections of female hormones. In fact, chemical castration. Turing still didn’t really understand what this meant for him, and he was even happy: he certainly wouldn’t have been able to work in prison, namely work was the meaning of his life...
At first, the effects of hormones were subtle, but gradually he began to notice that it was difficult for him to concentrate on solving a particular task. He tried to get permission to reduce the dose, but was refused. And then he noticed with horror that his breasts began to grow: the drugs were destroying both his intellect and his body.
In April 1953, he was allowed to stop taking the terrible drugs, but it was too late. They did their job. One rainy and melancholy evening in June, Turing returned home, took an apple and injected it with potassium cyanide. When his body was discovered the next day by a maid cleaning the house, there was still some poison left in the jar, and a half-eaten apple lay nearby. His mother could not believe in her son’s suicide - no, it was an accident, her son always loved experimenting with different substances...
Photo: DR
What contribution to computer science did Alan Turing, an English mathematician, cryptographer, logician, who had a fundamental influence on further development computer science, you will learn from this article.
Alan Turing's contributions to computer science
The significance of the work of this truly brilliant man for science cannot be overestimated. His versatility and liveliness of mind are simply impressive. Having a lecturer position at the University of Cambridge, in 1945 he gave up everything and moved to the National Physical Laboratory, where they formed a team to create a computer. Over the course of 3 years, he sketched the project and made important design proposals. The mathematician also proposed many valuable ideas regarding the operation of the machine and wrote software for her. Alan Turing created the first chess program around the same time.
In September 1948, he was transferred to the University of Manchester to the nominal position of deputy director of the computer laboratory. But in fact, Turing was in the mathematics department of the English mathematician Newman and was responsible for programming.
His finest hour came in 1935–1936, when Turing created the world-famous theory of “logical computing machines,” which was included in all textbooks on the theory of calculations, foundations of mathematics and logic. To confirm his theory, Alan demonstrated the legendary “Turing machine” - it was a simple device with program control, step-by-step actions and memory. Modern information systems, by the way, use this algorithm, like a Turing machine.
Since the outbreak of the Second World War, Alan has been collaborating with the British Government's Code and Cipher School, which existed at Bletchley Park. He was involved in breaking military codes. As a result, he made a breakthrough - he created a decoding machine called the Bomb.” Thanks to her, all the codes of the Nazi German Air Force were revealed, and in 1939 the mathematician broke the code of the German Enigma system, which controlled all German submarines. For his services he received a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, IV class.
In the post-war period (from 1945 to 1948), Alan Turing led the project of the National Physical School of Great Britain to create a new computer, ACE. In 1950 he wrote the article “Computing Machines and the Mind.” But the sad events of his personal life led to the fact that the great mathematician began to be condemned in 1953, after which he committed suicide on June 7, 1954, according to the official version of death.
We hope that from this article you learned what contribution Alan Turing made to computer science.
Alan Matheson Turing, OBE - English mathematician, logician, cryptographer, who had a significant influence on the development of computer science. Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Member of the Royal Society of London.
Alan Mathison Turing OBE (English Alan Mathison Turing; June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954) - English mathematician, logician, cryptographer, who had a significant influence on the development of computer science. The abstract computing “Turing Machine” he proposed in 1936 made it possible to formalize the concept of an algorithm and is still used in many theoretical and practical studies.
Alan Turing's life ended tragically. It was recognized as "one of the most known victims homophobia in the UK."
The son of a British official in India, Alan studied in France, England and then in the USA. Then many mathematicians tried to create an algorithm to determine the truth of statements.
But Gödel managed to prove that any useful mathematical system of axioms is incomplete in the sense that there is a statement in it, the truth of which can neither be refuted nor confirmed. This led Turing to argue that there is no general method for determining truth and thus mathematics will always contain unprovable statements.
In his work, Turing proposed a design for a simple device that has all the basic properties of a modern information system: program control, memory, and step-by-step operation. This imaginary machine, called a Turing machine, is used in the theory of automata or computers.
When Turing returned to England from the USA, the second World War. One of the most important weapons of this war was the Colossus computer under the Ultra project, which began in 1943 to crack the highly complex German codes. The work of this system significantly helped the Allies in the fight against the Nazi invaders.
After the war in 1945, Alan led the project to create the ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) computer, and in 1948 Turing began working with MADAM (Manchester Automatic DigitAl Machine), a computer with the largest memory in the world at that time.
Alan's work on the construction of the first computers and the development of programming methods was of invaluable importance, providing the basis for most research in the field of artificial intelligence. He believed that computers would eventually be able to think like humans, and he proposed a simple test known as the Turing test to evaluate a machine's ability to think: talk to a computer and let it convince you that it is a human.
In 1952, Turing published the first part of his theoretical study of the development of forms in living organisms. But this work remained unfinished.
In 1952, Turing's apartment was robbed, and during the investigation, the police found out that the theft was committed by a friend of his lover. The scandal received wide publicity - and on March 30, 1953, a trial took place in which Turing was accused of sodomy. He was given a choice of two sentences: imprisonment or suppression of libido with injections of the female hormone estrogen. The scientist chose the second.
The consequences of the trial were disastrous - Alan Turing was fired from the cipher analysis bureau and the University of Manchester. True, then he was eventually given back the opportunity to teach. Nevertheless, the scientist lived in seclusion until 1954, playing his favorite game “Desert Island”, which consisted of obtaining all kinds of chemical substances from popular products.
On June 8, 1954, Alan Matheson Turing was found dead in his home from cyanide poisoning. An apple filled with this poison lay nearby on the night table. It is still not known for sure whether it was suicide or whether Turing was killed by envious people. His mother believed that he was poisoned accidentally because he always handled chemicals carelessly.
It was discovered that computers still cannot solve any math problem. Alan Turing proved in 1936 that a general algorithm for solving the stopping problem for any possible input could not exist.
During World War II, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, a British cryptographic center, where he headed one of five groups, Hut 8, involved in deciphering Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe messages encoded by the German Enigma cipher machine as part of Project Ultra. Turing's contributions to the cryptographic analysis of the Enigma algorithm were based on earlier cryptanalysis previous versions encryption machine, made in 1938 by the Polish cryptanalyst Marian Rejewski.
In early 1940, he developed the Bomba deciphering machine, which made it possible to read Luftwaffe messages. The principle of operation of the “Bomb” was to search possible options the cipher key and attempts to decrypt the text if part of the plaintext or the structure of the message being decrypted was known.
The search for keys was carried out by rotating mechanical drums, accompanied by a sound similar to the ticking of a clock, which is why the “Bomb” got its name. For each possible key value given by the positions of the rotors (the number of keys was approximately 1019 for land-based Enigma and 1022 for cipher machines used in submarines), the Bomb performed a check against a known plaintext, carried out electrically.
Bletchley's first Turing Bomb was launched on 18 March 1940. The design of Turing's Bombs was also based on the design of Rejewski's machine of the same name.
Six months later, they managed to crack the more resistant Kriegsmarine code. Later, by 1943, Turing made a significant contribution to the creation of a more advanced deciphering electronic computer, the Colossus, used for the same purposes.
Even reading coded German messages, in March 1943 Britain stood on the brink of defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic and the entire Second World War. It is likely that without deciphering the Enigma code, the course of this war would have been different.
Any intuitively computable function is partially recursive, or, equivalently, can be computed using some Turing machine.
Alan Turing proposed (known as the Church-Turing thesis) that any algorithm in the intuitive sense of the word can be represented by an equivalent Turing machine.
Clarification of the concept of computability based on the concept of a Turing machine (and other equivalent concepts) opened up the possibility of rigorously proving the algorithmic unsolvability of various mass problems (that is, problems of finding a unified method for solving a certain class of problems, the conditions of which can vary within certain limits).
The simplest example of an algorithmically unsolvable mass problem is the so-called algorithm applicability problem (also called the stopping problem).
It is as follows: it is required to find a general method that would allow for an arbitrary Turing machine (specified by its program) and an arbitrary initial state tapes of this machine determine whether the operation of the machine will be completed in a finite number of steps, or will continue indefinitely.
Turing is the founder of the theory of artificial intelligence.
The Turing machine is an extension of the model finite state machine and is capable of simulating (if there is an appropriate program) any machine whose action is to transition from one discrete state to another.
The Turing test is a test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 in his article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” to test whether a computer is intelligent in the human sense. In this test, one or more people must ask questions to two secret interlocutors and, based on the answers, determine which of them is a machine and which is a human. If a machine that was masquerading as a human could not be revealed, the machine was assumed to be intelligent.
Turing was homosexual. At the time, homosexual intercourse was illegal in Britain and homosexuality was considered a mental illness.
In 1952, he was charged with "gross indecency" for being gay. Turing was convicted and given the choice between two years imprisonment and hormonal therapy in the form of estrogen injections, which, in essence, was chemical castration.
Turing chose therapy. One of the effects was growing breasts and decreased libido. In addition, as a result of his conviction, he lost the right to work in the field of cryptography.
A year after his conviction, he died from cyanide poisoning, which was apparently contained in an apple, half of which Turing ate before his death. He was found to have committed suicide. However, his mother believed that he was poisoned accidentally because he always handled chemicals carelessly.
On September 10, 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly apologized for the methods to which Alan Turing was subjected.
In 2009, Alan Turing was recognized as "one of the UK's most famous victims of homophobia".
— In Memory of Alan Turing
* One of the Association for Computing Machinery's annual awards is called the Turing Award.
* Alan Turing is mentioned in the historical novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and appears in Robert Harris' novel Enigma.
* Famous science fiction writer Harry Harrison, in collaboration with American artificial intelligence scientist Marvin Minsky, wrote the novel “The Turing Option” (1992).
* William Gibson's novel Neuromancer features the "Turing Police" ("Turing Register"), which monitors and monitors the development of existing artificial intelligences.
To perform calculations, you must enable ActiveX controls!
Illustration copyright Studiocanal Image caption Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), his wife Joan (Keira Knightley) and their fellow members of the team that cracked the Nazi Enigma encryption machine. Still from the film "The Imitation Game"
“No one else made the same contribution to our victory in the war,” Winston Churchill, who thus described the British mathematician Alan Turing, knew better than others the cost of victory and the cost of the efforts of different people in this victory.
Super popular now after "Sherlock Holmes" Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role, no less popular Keira Knightley in the role of Turing's colleague and wife - the brightest stars of British cinema are called upon to attract increased attention to the already extremely fascinating story of the scientist's life in the film being released these days in British screens of the film "The Imitation Game".
Who is Turing?
Illustration copyright studiocanal Image caption The pressure was monstrous. Turing was once almost arrested on suspicion of espionage. Still from the film "The Imitation Game"The imitation game, or imitation game, is one of the mathematical and logical techniques developed by Turing for the first proto-computers he invented. This and many other methods of working with the first very primitive computers helped Thuring and his group to uncover the top-secret code of the German Wehrmacht.
No one else made the same contribution to our victory in the war Winston Churchill
In 1939, shortly after the outbreak of war, Turing, then working at the University of Cambridge, was recruited to work on breaking the code of the German Enigma cipher machine. The work was top secret, carried out at the closed Bletchley Park base in Buckinghamshire in the center of England. The problem with Enigma coding was that the code system changed every day, and the next morning all the results achieved during the day went into the trash.
The work continued for several years under tremendous pressure from the top leadership of the British army and counterintelligence. Turing was on the verge of dismissal and once even arrest - on suspicion of spying for the Soviets, and only the personal intervention of Churchill, to whom the scientist, confident in the correctness of his chosen method, turned for support, saved him and his group.
Illustration copyright Science Photo Library Image caption Alan Turing - not the cinematic one, but the real one - runs marathon distance in 1946At the same time, Turing - as we see him in the film - was not an easy person, he had a hard time getting along with people, and even within his own group, friction arose all the time, until finally the code was cracked.
Both his work and Turing himself remained strictly classified after the war.
Prosecution and posthumous pardon
In 1952, while working in Manchester, the homosexual Turing was arrested and prosecuted for his then illegal relationship with a 19-year-old young man. He was faced with a stark choice - prison or "treatment" with estrogen, a process that was essentially nothing more than chemical castration.
Turing's sexuality is central to the film and to its character's identity.
A year after this “treatment” in 1954, two weeks before his 42nd birthday, Turing took a dose of potassium cyanide. An investigation ruled the death to be a suicide.
However, in last years The evidence that formed the basis for the conclusion about the death of the mathematician in 1954 has been called into question by some experts.
Illustration copyright studiocanal Image caption Even the investigator who interrogated Turing in the case of homosexuality recognized him as a “man of honor”In 2009, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a formal public apology on behalf of the UK government for the "monstrous treatment" to which the scientist was subjected.
In 2013 - only very recently - by a special decree of Queen Elizabeth II, Turing was granted a posthumous pardon.
History in cinema
"The Imitation Game" is not the first Feature Film, dedicated to Alan Turing and his fight against Enigma.
In 2001, a film called “Enigma” was released; a brilliant team of English cultural figures worked on it: writer Robert Harris, author of the novel of the same name; playwright Tom Stoppard, who turned the novel into a screenplay; directed by Michael Apted and scored by James Bond films by composer John Barry. And this constellation was headed by Mick Jagger, who acted as a producer - it was to him, in fact, that the idea of that film belonged. Jagger had long been fascinated by Turing's story, and the film featured an authentic German Enigma machine from his own collection.
The Imitation Game is also a film adaptation, not of a novel, but of a biography of Turing written by historian Andrew Hodges.
Illustration copyright studiocanal Image caption For Norwegian director Morten Tyldim, The Imitation Game is his first feature film. English languageThe film does not set itself the task of scrupulously tracing the life story of the scientist. Its action begins in 1939 - with the scene of a daring interview, as a result of which Turing only miraculously gets a place at Bletchley Park.
However, in retrospect we find ourselves in a prestigious closed private school, one of those English schools that educate world-famous scientists and politicians. Their flip side is the cruel, suffocating atmosphere, so brilliantly and grotesquely reproduced back in the late 60s by director Lindsay Anderson, hints of which we see in “The Imitation Game.”
Poetry and the oppression of love
Illustration copyright studiocanal Image caption Turing named the main creation of his life - the machine with which the Enigma code was cracked - "Christopher" in honor of his youthful love.It is at school that Turing's homosexuality awakens. He awakens from not so much a romantic, but a friendly feeling for his classmate Christopher Morcom, the only one who sympathizes with him and helps him not to lose himself among the bullying and beatings. Morcom would die at the age of 18 from tuberculosis, and Turing would carry his feelings for him throughout his life. The main invention of his life - the machine with which he cracked the Enigma code, he called "Christopher".
The main thing for us was the invisible: poetry, mystery, the repression of his sexuality. This is a man whose right to love was taken away - this is precisely the tragedy of his personality and the tragedy of the film Benedict Cumberbatch
Turing's homosexuality is central to the film and to its character's identity. Turing was forced, out of necessity, to hide his sexual orientation. At some point, he even becomes the object of blackmail from a Soviet spy who has sneaked into the group. But at the same time, he is not at all ashamed of his nature.
When arrested, he does not try to evade at all and voluntarily agrees to write a sincere confession. The five-page text was written so sincerely and with such dignity that even the policeman who interrogated him was forced to admit that in front of him was a “man of honor.”
At the same time, the sexual side of Turing’s life does not stick out at all. There is not a single scene in the entire film in which we see him having physical relationships with men. Teenage feelings for Morcom are manifested in no more than a glance. Some critics saw in such restraint even chastity that was excessive for modern cinema.
“For me, there is more than enough frank love in the film,” Benedict Cumberbatch responds to critics. “And homosexuality has absolutely nothing to do with it. If such scenes could add meaning to the film, enrich it, we would undoubtedly go for it. For me, this is not there would be no problem."
Illustration copyright studiocanal Image caption Turing's wife (Keira Knightley) was well aware of her husband's homosexuality. For both of them, intellectual and spiritual intimacy was much more important than physical“However, the main thing for us,” the actor continues, “was the invisible: poetry, mystery, the suppression of his sexuality. This is a man whose right to love was taken away - this is precisely the tragedy of his personality and the tragedy of the film.”
Turing's wife was well aware of his sexuality. For both of them, intellectual, professional spiritual intimacy was much more important than physical.
Genius of the 20th century
The film ends with an eloquent title: “His invention was far from perfect, but it gave birth to a whole new area research, which was called the "Turing machine". Today we call them "computers".
“We can look ahead only a very short distance, but it is already obvious that we still have a lot to do...”
Alan Matheson Turing
Lonely Prodigy
The wall of the Warrington Lodge hotel (and former hospital) is still decorated with a sign: “Alan Turing, cybernetics pioneer and codebreaker, was born here.” This happened on June 23, 1912. Alan was the second son in the family of an employee of the English colonial department, Julius Matheson Turing, and the daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras Railways, Ethel Sarah Stoney. They met and got married in India. And their work was connected with this country until 1926. Therefore, both of their sons, left in England, were placed in the care of a family friend, a retired colonel. Later, the children were raised in a private boarding school. Life outside the family did not spoil them with the tenderness that a child raised surrounded by parents receives. However, at that time this was such a common practice that the children did not feel harmed in any way.
Alan learned to read, write and count at the age of six. His talent was immediately noted by the headmaster of St. Michael's School in Hastings. At the age of eleven he became interested in chemistry and without much difficulty entered the privileged Sherbon school. However, he did not like many of the mandatory humanities subjects there, and he was openly idle in class. But after classes, Alan began his own educational program, where priority was given to mathematics. Everything would be fine, but this attitude jeopardized obtaining a certificate. The management once gave Alan's mother a note:
“Your son apparently only wants to be a scientific specialist. Maybe a mathematician - students like him are born once every two hundred years. But... what is he doing at our school?
Meanwhile, at the age of fifteen, Alan independently figured out the theory of relativity. However, his superiority over his peers in mathematics and chess, as well as his emphasized individualism, made him an outcast. However, one day a “kindred spirit” appears in the person of a new classmate, Christopher Morcom. Now they babble together in the same French, and after school they study higher mathematics as a couple.
It’s sad, but after graduating from school, only Christopher manages to get into Cambridge. Alan can only be happy for his friend and prepare for the assault on next year. When suddenly Morcom dies suddenly. Turing, despite the weight of grief from the loss of the only friend in his life, finds the strength to enter King's College, Cambridge. There, since 1931, he immersed himself in mathematics and quantum physics with complete dedication, and just three years later he graduated from the four-year course ahead of schedule and with honors. In 1935, he defended his dissertation and began receiving a research fellowship.
It was then that the concept appeared that immortalized Alan’s name in textbooks. In 1936, the Turing Machine appeared. It was a kind of abstract performer and was the simplest computing machine with linear memory. This invention of Alan is still used to this day in research on the theory of automata or computers. At the same time, Turing proves the absence of a “general method for determining truth,” that is, the proposition that in mathematics there will always be unprovable statements.
Codebreaker
From 1936 to 1938, Turing worked and studied at Princeton University under the guidance of the luminary of mathematics Alonzo Church. Having received his doctorate, he returned to Cambridge, at the same time starting collaboration with the School of Codes and Ciphers, a secret laboratory “under the wing” of MI6 (British intelligence). With the outbreak of World War II, this cooperation becomes so close that Alan moves to the secret laboratories of Bletchley Park, where he participates in Project Ultra. Here, following the task of the project, Turing devotes all his strength to the confrontation with the German electromechanical encryption device Enigma.
Bletchley Park
Actually, the first version of Enigma was cracked by the Polish cryptanalyst Marian Rejewski back in 1938. However, Germany complicated the machine so much that it considered breaking the codes “impossible in principle” even if the unit itself was captured. Therefore, the encryption messages were transmitted brazenly - an open radio signal. Of course, the number of variants of Enigma keys reached 1022. Cherishing plans for the devastation of England before its occupation, fascist Germany conducted intensive bombing of British cities. For example, on November 14, 1940, about five hundred fascist planes dropped six hundred tons of heavy bombs and about a thousand land mines on the city of Coventry. Alas, England could do nothing to counteract the sudden crushing raids, and therefore, barely coping, it was necessary to humbly clear away the rubble and bury its citizens. Submarines also caused considerable damage, sending more than sixty British ships a month to the bottom. Moreover, for the fascist submarines it did not matter whether it was a military ship, a merchant ship or a passenger ship.
Naturally, all actions of fascist planes and submarines were coordinated with the help of Enigma devices. To decipher this riddle to prevent strikes and save hundreds of thousands of human lives: this was the task assigned to the leader of one of the five groups - Alan Turing - and his team consisting of the country's intellectual elite.
Realizing that thousands of people were dying every day due to the inability to decipher the enemy's intentions, and partly accepting responsibility for the lives of their compatriots, Turing's group - Hut 8 - worked almost without sleep or rest. With titanic efforts, in a fairly short time, already on March 18, 1940, a decryption device called the “Bomb” was created. The machine got its name because of the sound, similar to the ticking of a clock, that it made. This happened due to enumeration of the keys when rotating the mechanical drums.
Enigma encryption machine
Even more was done than was required at that time: Turing calculated the subsequent directions of modernization of the enemy code. And when in 1941, at the headquarters of the fascist military, they realized in surprise that the “impossible” fact of deciphering had been accomplished and changed the code, it took only a month to decipher it. In 1943, an even more advanced decoder was created - the Colossus computer.
Alan Turing was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1946 for his vital contribution to the war effort. As the Bletchley Park mathematician I. J. Goode said of Alan's role in the victory:
“I do not presume to say that we won the war thanks to Turing, but I declare with all responsibility that without him we might have lost it!”
Decryption device "Bomb"
Having raised the level of British decryption technology to incredible heights, already in 1945, at the National Physical Laboratory, Alan tried to create the first computer, ACE (Automatic Computing Engine). However, Turing's bold ideas do not find support already at the project stage. In 1947, Turing returned to the University of Cambridge, while giving lectures at the University of Manchester, where he headed the MADAM (Manchester Automatic Digital Machine) project. Unlike the skeptics at the National Laboratory, more determined people work on the team here, and the project culminates in the creation of one of the first computers with the largest memory at that time. In 1947, Turing published his work Shortcut Code Instructions, which laid the foundation for programming languages.
In 1950, Alan’s article “Computing Machines and Intelligence” was published, in which he proposed his famous “Turing Test” on the topic of artificial intelligence. These works provide the basis for research in the field of artificial intelligence. 1951 was the year Turing was elected to the Royal Society.
In 1952, Turing’s work “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” was published, in which he first described the process of self-organization of matter using mathematical methods and predicted the oscillatory nature of some chemical reactions. Alas, mathematical biology became Turing's last hobby.
Pool of contempt
In his current life, as in his distant childhood, Alan is immersed in his loneliness, which is not burdensome either for himself or for those around him. Besides chess, he is still passionate about marathon running, setting his alarm clock according to the stars, and enjoying children's radio programs.
Alan's life is turned upside down after a ridiculous crime story. He was robbed by a friend of his sexual partner. Turing was confident that he was right when he did not get away with this crime and wrote a statement to the police. However, having found out the juicy details, the police began to unwind Turing himself under the article of “extremely indecent behavior.” Alan, constantly immersed in science, clearly did not understand the intricacies of the British mentality and was discouraged by the rapidly growing public outcry.
He never hid his sexual preferences, but he also did not stick them out, looking away intimate relationships is by no means the most important place in your life. During the war years, he even tried to propose to a Bletchley Park employee, but later decided not to argue with his nature. However, in the light of English laws of that time, homosexuality was equated with mental illness, and therefore the trial that took place on March 31, 1953 presented yesterday’s hero with a cruel and categorical choice: imprisonment or chemical castration - hormonal therapy.
Such massive frenzied and humiliating attention came as a shock to Turing. His grandiose victories over the best minds of a merciless enemy were celebrated much more modestly than by inflating the shameful hype around his sexual orientation. Excited by the painstaking digging through dirty laundry, society could not stop in its “righteous” anger. Indeed, behind the heap of accusations against Turing, each accuser hid the dirt of his own sins. As a man belonging to science, Alan chose to remain free.
But his hopes for further cloudless scientific activity were not justified - the outcast was deprived of security clearance and thrown out of the Department of Codes. Common sense was not abandoned only by the teaching staff of the University of Manchester, which retained Turing in their ranks, allegedly taking him on bail. However, Alan, who was in severe depression, almost never appeared there.
On June 8, 1954, he was found dead at home. The doctor declared death due to poisoning with potassium cyanide contained in a bitten apple lying nearby. According to legend, this fruit later became the Apple logo. His mother claimed that his death was due to the careless use of chemicals while playing “Desert Island,” which Alan had invented in his early childhood. The essence of this game was to obtain chemicals from ordinary products and substances.
Meanwhile, there was also a version about the involvement of special services in Turing’s death, doubting the loyalty of the disgraced but knowledgeable scientist, who, moreover, loved to travel around Europe. Be that as it may, the main reason for the death of Alan Turing is the unprincipled betrayal of the prim British society.
And yet, in 2002, Turing was recognized as "one of the hundred greatest Britons in history." But only in 2009, under pressure public opinion, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an official apology for the persecution of the scientist. He declared:
“Although Turing was treated within the bounds of the law at the time and we cannot turn back the clock, the punishment meted out to him was grossly unfair and I am pleased to say how deeply I and we all regret what happened to him.”
Today, an asteroid named Turing roams the cosmos. The Association for Computing Machinery annually awards the Turing Award. His name appears in science fiction novels and computer games. In honor of the centenary of Turing's birth, a festive celebration of the scientist was organized. But the greatest interest for scientific world represents the Turing test, the passing of which developed into annual competition with a nice cash Lebner Prize.
Photos used:
2. Milton_Keynes
