In 1976, two Americans - Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobe - assembled the first personal computer and founded Apple. They dedicated their logo - "a bitten apple" - to the one who for the first time theoretically presented a universal computing machine - the prototype of a computer, and put the word "computer" into use.
Someone who is considered the first hacker to decipher ingenious German codes during the war. Namely - the outstanding English scientist Alan Turing.
Conditions for the emergence of genius
“As a matter of fact, a person's biography never begins from the moment of his birth. Moreover, the biography of a true genius. Indeed, in order for a bodily and spiritual structure to arise, in which genius would be manifested in its entirety, an unusually planned interaction, a mixture of genes and chromosomes, inexplicable forces and matters, is necessary, moreover, over several generations. This is the reason for the emergence of genius was given by the writer Istvan Varna. If we agree with him, then by the time of birth our hero had all the necessary conditions for the manifestation of his genius. Judge for yourself.
Alan Matheson Turing was born on June 23, 1912 in London. His parents Julius Mathison Turing and Sarah Ethel Stoney met and got married in India. Turing served in the English Colonial Office, and Ethel was the daughter of the chief engineer of the Madras Railways. The Turing were descended from an old Scottish family whose roots go back to the 14th century. His grandfather, John Turing, had a degree in mathematics from Cambridge, his father had a BA in history and literature from Oxford, and studied Indian history and Tamil. The mother of our hero studied art and music in France, in her family was the famous physicist George Stoney, who in 1891 proposed the concept of "electron".
Alan's parents had to travel frequently between Britain and India, and the boy, along with his older brother, was left in the care of family friends, a retired colonel and his wife. The elderly couple set out to prepare the brothers for admission to a closed school for boys in their circle.
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Such students are born every 200 years
At the age of six, Alan already knew how to read, write and count. The headmaster of the school, having met a new student, exclaimed: "Yes, he is a genius!" However, the classes did not bring much joy to the boy. His inquiring mind demanded more.
10-year-old Alan was greatly influenced by Edwin Brewster's Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know About. He later confessed to his mother that it was this book that opened his eyes to science. In the meantime, Alan set up various experiments that worried his mother very much, since, in her opinion, they distracted her son from the main task - entering a prestigious educational institution. But her fears were in vain: in 1926, Alan was admitted to a private school.
Alas, apart from mathematics, he was attracted by little in this educational institution, and therefore the grades in other subjects were low.
However, soon Alan was once again considered a genius, and it happened at the age of 15. The mathematics teacher was delighted when Turing, considered a desperate lazy person, showed him his independent work on the use of Bernoulli numbers. As a result, among the unflattering characteristics in the class magazine, the following appeared: "Such students are born once every 200 years."
Early departed friend
Alan Turing was an introverted person, focused on his inner world, dominated by mathematics and physics. But one day a new student appeared in the class - Christopher Morcom. They were brought together by a common interest in mathematics and astronomy.
Alas, soon after leaving school, a misfortune happened - in February 1930, Morcom died suddenly from "bovine tuberculosis", which he had contracted in childhood. Christopher's death shocked Alan, who was left alone again.
After school, Alan Turing became a student at King's College Cambridge. He had a lot to do in science. For example, he was very interested in the question of the structure of the human mind - the principle of the brain from the point of view of a mathematician.
He still had no close friends, as Turing, with his eccentric demeanor and ridiculous manner of dress, alienated those around him. In addition, he wore strange hairstyles and spoke in a harsh, raspy voice. The students were surprised that Turing never used the exact time signals on the radio, but set his alarm clock, looking at the stars and doing some kind of calculations. On the radio, he listened only to children's programs …
In 1934, Alan Turing graduated with honors from college, and in 1938 he defended his doctoral dissertation.
First hacker
After graduating from college, Alan Turing continued intensive research in the field of human intelligence and in 1936 he designed a computing device called the "Turing machine." It was a general-purpose computer model, today it is considered the most important discovery of the 20th century.
And then the Second World War began, and Alan Turing was involved in the operation to decipher the codes used in communications with enemy submarines and aircraft. Turing succeeded in constructing a decoder, which he called Bom be (and at that time he was not yet thirty!).
In early June, Alan began to have severe bouts of allergies, therefore, fleeing the pollen, he came to work in a gas mask. Turing rode a bicycle whose chain was constantly falling off. He did not give it to be repaired, but while driving he counted the pedal revolutions and, at the right time, got off and straightened the chain with his hands. He also attached his mug with a chain to the radiator - he was afraid that it would be stolen. What an eccentric he was!
However, using his brilliant ideas, the British broke into the German encryption and coding system, which was considered ultra-reliable. And this, in turn, made it possible to destroy enemy submarines and aircraft. It was not for nothing that in 1945 Alan Turing was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
Can a machine think?
After the war, Turing took up the problem of studying the possibility of thinking mechanisms, based on the laws of development of living organisms. In 1950, Turing published a book, which he titled: "Can a Machine Think?" Later this problem was called "artificial intelligence". At the same time, Turing worked at the University of Manchester and continued to crack ciphers, this time of Soviet residents in England.
Life went on as usual. Turing worked, was engaged in independent research. He bought a house in a small town 10 miles outside Manchester and ran that distance on his way to university. It is worth saying that he was an excellent athlete, ran cross-country and repeatedly took pride of place in marathons.
End of scientific activity
Everything went downhill in 1952 when Turing's apartment was robbed. He reported this to the police. In the course of the investigation, it turned out that Turing's sexual partner was involved in the theft (however, the scientist never hid his non-traditional sexual orientation).
In those years in England, homosexuality was considered a criminal offense. The high-profile trial of Alan Turing lasted for several months. The brilliant services of the scientist to the state were not taken into account. According to the laws of the time, the accused had a choice: a two-year imprisonment or hormone therapy, which was essentially chemical sterilization. Turing, horrified at the prospect of imprisonment, chose injections.
After the end of the process, the scientist was suspended from work as a cryptanalysis consultant, and he was banned from working at the university. Turing suddenly lost his good name, the meaning of life, and the means of subsistence.
The secret of the bitten apple
The denouement came on June 8, 1954, when Alan Mathison Turing was found dead in his bed. He did not live two weeks to 42 years old. There was a bitten apple on the night table. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning.
It is believed that Turing injected a cyanide solution into an apple and died after taking a bite. According to another version, his death was the work of Soviet intelligence. After all, he was engaged in deciphering its codes, and two members of the Cambridge Five have already been identified - the British who were spying for the USSR. One of them, Guy Burgess, who managed to flee the country, was a homosexual close acquaintance of Turing. It is possible that the robbery of the apartment was staged by Soviet agents in order to discredit the scientist.
Life put everything in its place. Today Alan Turing is included in the list of the 100 Greatest Britons in history, and 2012 was even declared the Year of Turing on the occasion of his 100th birthday. And in 2014, the movie The Imitation Game, which tells about the life of Alan Turing, was released.
Efim Terletsky