Alan Turing (1912-1954)

Famous for: Cracking the Enigma Codes.

He is often considered as the father of modern computer science. He provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine. Meanwhile, with the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think.

In 1948, he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world’s earliest true computers. During the Second World War, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, the UK’s code-breaking center, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised several techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.