Alan Turing was a mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst and philosopher that lived from 1912 to 1954. Turing is most known for the work he accomplished during the Second World War as a researcher of the English army and the allied forces mandated to break the “Enigma machine”— a machine created by the German forces to send encrypted messages to the entire German army. With his machine created to destroy “enigma”, Turing is estimated to have saved more than 14 million lives and shorten the war by more than 2 years in Europe. He is considered to be the father of artificial intelligence. Despite all of his accomplishments and sacrifices for his nation, Turing was never fully recognized by his country during his lifetime because of his homosexuality. Today, Turing’s work is recognized all over the world. In fact an academy award movie was made in remembrance of his work on cryptanalysis of “Enigma”. His work is really inspiring to me because it tells me that it doesn’t matter who or what you are to society, what matters is what you decide to create with your life.
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 