Alan Turing is nowadays considered to be the father of modern computing and artificial intelligence. He was a mathematician and logician, amongst other things and is most well-known for working with the British government in breaking enemy codes during the Second World War.

Alan Mathison Turing is born on 23 June the 1912 in London. In his young years, Turing attended Sherborne School in Dorset and then studied as an undergraduate at King’s College Cambridge where he was prized in mathematics. In 1938, Alan Turing obtained his PhD for the Department of mathematics of Princeton.

At the outbreak of WWII, Turing joined the Government Codes and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, where he worked, along with his team on breaking the code for the Enigma machine: the device used by the Germans to send coded messages sharing very secret and sensitive information such as the times and places of planned attacks for example. In order to do so, Turing developed a machine called the Bombe which he used to simplify the breaking of the Enigma Machine. As well as breaking Enigma, Alan Turing also broke the Naval Enigma, which is even more complicated to decode.

It is undeniable that Alan Turing and his wartime services helped win the war. Indeed, Winston Churchill stated that he shortened the war by two to four years. As well, it has been proven by historians that his discovery saved an estimated 14 to 21 million lives. However, his work was kept secret for over 50 years after WWII and her was therefore not recognized for his actions as very few people were aware of the importance of what he had done and accomplished at Bletchley Park.

After WWII, Alan Turing became deputy director of the computing lab at Manchester University.

Alan Turing’s death conditions do not live up to what he accomplished in his life. Indeed, he was prosecuted in 1952 for his homosexuality and criminally charged for "gross indecency". In order for him not to go to prison, he had to undergo chemical castration.

In 1954, Turing died a few days before turning 42, on 7 June in Cheshire, due to cyanide poisoning. His death is supposedly a suicide however, some inquests show that know evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning

More than 60 years after his death, it is still wondered how much further ahead computing would be if he had lived longer.