“The Imitation Game”

When googled this ” Who is the father of Computer Science”, the answer was Alan Turing.

This blog is not an introduction to Alan Turing because he doesn’t need one, rather a homage to one of the greatest minds to have lived on this planet. He was a Computer Scientist, a mathematician, theoretical biologist, cryptanalyst, logician and a philosopher. He was one of the most noted hackers of World War II because of his theories and inventions. Today, we even give Turing Award to the greatest experts in the computer science field and still hold artificial intelligence to the standard of the Turing Test. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Apart from all his inventions and theories, he is also known as –

The Code Breaker who saved ‘millions of lives’.

It is believed that if he hadn’t build the “Turing Machine”, if U-boat Enigma had not been broken, the war would have continued for another 2-3 years, a further millions of people might have been killed.

On top of all of these accomplishments, Turing also conceptualized the first home computer in his paper “On Computable Numbers”. The Universal Turing Machine is a “mathematical tool equivalent to a digital computer” and is still the “most widely used model of computation in computability and complexity theory.”

Later, in his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” he wrote about the concepts of Artificial Intelligence which he called “The Imitation Game” but now known as “Turing Test” in which : if a tester is not able to find out whether the answer of any problem is given by a human or a machine then the machine passes the test.

Alan Turing is also credited with designing the first computer chess program in 1953. Turing first worked on the algorithm in 1948. The program did not run on a computer; Turing “ran” the program by flipping through the pages of the algorithm and carrying out its instructions on a chessboard. According to Garry Kasparov, Turing’s program “played a recognizable game of chess.”

Turing died at the age of 41, the cause of death was cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined that he had committed suicide. Another bright mind ended way too soon by way of society’s intolerance.

I honor this man of courage and faith.

He has set an invaluable and inspiring example:

Go where your ideas lead you, and pay no attention to artificial borders.

Chao!