In Our Time

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

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In Our Time: Alan Turing

15/10/2020

Alan Turing

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Alan Turing

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the short, brilliant life of computer science's founder.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alan Turing (1912-1954) whose 1936 paper On Computable Numbers effectively founded computer science.  Immediately recognised by his peers, his wider reputation has grown as our reliance on computers has grown.  He was a leading figure at Bletchley Park in the Second World War, using his ideas for cracking enemy codes, work said to have shortened the war by two years and saved millions of lives. That vital work was still secret when Turing was convicted in 1952 for having a sexual relationship with another man for which he was given oestrogen for a year, or chemically castrated. Turing was to kill himself two years later.  The immensity of his contribution to computing was recognised in the 1960s by the creation of the Turing Award, known as the Nobel of computer science, and he is to be the new face on the £50 note.

With

Leslie Ann Goldberg
Professor of Computer Science and Fellow of St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford

Simon Schaffer
Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Darwin College

And 

Andrew Hodges
Biographer of Turing and Emeritus Fellow of  Wadham College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

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