Person
Alan Turing
British mathematician whose 1936 model of computation defined what it means for a problem to be solvable by a machine.
Updated Oct 28, 2026 · 1 min read · 5 connections
- Born
- 23 June 1912, London
- Died
- 7 June 1954, Wilmslow
- Known for
- Turing machine, Turing test
Computability
In his 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers”, Turing introduced the turing machine, an abstract device that manipulates symbols on a tape. He used it to show that no general procedure can decide every mathematical statement, a result closely related to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.
The paper gave the informal notion of an algorithm a precise definition, and it remains the foundation of theoretical computer science.
Machine intelligence
In 1950 Turing asked whether machines can think and proposed the imitation game, now called the Turing test. The proposal shaped the philosophy of mind for decades and prompted objections such as John Searle’s Chinese room argument.