Alan Turing
was one of the first people to truly deserve the name
computer scientist. Although his contributions
to the field are too numerous to list, his best-known are the
eponymous Turing Test and
Turing Machine.
The Turing Test is to this day the standard
test for determining whether a computer is truly intelligent. This
test has yet to be passed.
The Turing Machine refers to an abstract finite
state automaton with infinite memory that can be proven equivalent
to any any other finite state automaton with arbitrarily large memory.
Thus what is true for a Turing machine is true for all equivalent
machines no matter how implemented.
Turing was also an accomplished
mathematician and
cryptographer. His assistance
was crucial in helping the Allies decode the German Enigma
machine. He committed suicide on June
7, 1954 after being
convicted of homosexuality and forced to take female
hormone injections.