Alan Mathison Turing

b 1912 in London—died 1954 in Wilmslow (GB). From 1931 to 1934 he studied mathematics at King’s College in Cambridge, Great Britain. In 1936, after graduating, he began the study «On Computable Numbers» (published 1937), in which he described the «Turing Machine,» considered the theoretical prototype of an electronic digital computer. During World War II, he worked on the development of the Colossus Machine, which deciphered the codes of the German enciphering machine called ENIGMA. After the war, Turing turned his attention to developing computers. He developed the Turing Test for a universal Turing Machine, which was published in 1950 in the Oxford University Press magazine «Mind,» under the title «Computing Machinery and Intelligence». With that, Turing gave a decided boost to developing the new discipline of artificial intelligence. In 1952 Turing was arrested at a demonstration against biased homophobic laws, and because of his own homosexuality was forced to undergo an oestrogen-based hormone treatment. A year later, on July 7, 1954, he committed suicide in Wilmslow by eating an apple treated with cyanide.