To celebrate the 100th birthday of legendary British mathematician and World War II hero, Alan Turing, Google has concocted a great interactive Google Doodle modeled after Turing's eponymous machine that laid the groundwork for modern-day computing.
Born in London in June, 1912, Turing rose to prominence in 1936 when he published his paper "On Computable Numbers" which introduced the idea of “algorithms” and “computing machines." Both of which became integral to the development of computers and CPUs.
Later, while working with Government Code and Cypher School, Britain's codebreaking group, he helped the Allied forces defeat the Nazis by cracking the Engima codes, messages sent by the Axis powers that were heavily encrypted by an Engima machine.
As Andrew Eland, Engineering Director, Google U.K. says on Google's official blog, "Turing's life was one of astounding highs and devastating lows." In 1952, when homosexuality was a crime in the United Kingdom, Turing was convicted for homosexuality. Two years later the genius who contributed so much to the world of science and helped save the lives of thousands was found dead from cyanide poisoning.
But today is about celebrating Alan Turing's life. Of course, there's much more to his life than we've just laid out. Head to Google, peep the Doodle, then Google the man.
[via Google]
