Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS ( /ˈtjʊərɪŋ/ TEWR-ing; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.
During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. For a time he was head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.
After the war he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE. In 1948 Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, where he assisted in the development of the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and he predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, which were first observed in the 1960s.
Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE ( /ˈdʒækəbi/; born 22 October 1938) is an English actor and film director.
A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet,Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in Much Ado About Nothing. His stage work also included playing Edward II,Octavius Caesar,Richard III, and Cyrano de Bergerac.
In addition to being a founder member of the Royal National Theatre and winning several prestigious theatre awards, Jacobi has also enjoyed a successful television career, starring in the critically praised adaptation of Roberts Graves' I, Claudius, for which he won a BAFTA; the titular role in the acclaimed medieval drama series Brother Cadfael, and Stanley Baldwin in The Gathering Storm. Though principally a stage actor, Jacobi has appeared in a number of films, such as Henry V (1989), Dead Again (1991), Gladiator (2000), Gosford Park (2001), The Golden Compass (2007), The King's Speech (2010), My Week with Marilyn (2011), and the forthcoming Hippie Hippie Shake. Like Laurence Olivier, he holds two knighthoods, Danish and British.
Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English film, television, radio and theatre actor. His most acclaimed roles include Stephen Hawking in the BBC drama Hawking (2004); William Pitt in the historical film Amazing Grace (2006); the protagonist Stephen Ezard in the miniseries thriller The Last Enemy (2008); Paul Marshall in Atonement (2007); Bernard in Small Island (2009); Sherlock Holmes in the modern BBC adaptation series Sherlock (2010); and Peter Guillam in the spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011).
In February 2011, he began playing both Victor Frankenstein and his creature opposite Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle's stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The play had a three-month run at the National Theatre. In late 2011, he played Major Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011). The film received five BAFTA nominations and six Academy Award nominations, including the Best Picture nomination in 2012. He also played Peter Guillam, one of the pivotal roles in Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011), which was nominated for three Academy Awards and 11 BAFTA Awards. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was also nominated for Best Picture in 2012.
Joan Murray (born in New York City in 1945) is an American poet.
She graduated from Hunter College and later earned an M.A. from New York University. She has been the poet in residence at the New York State Writer's Institute as well as spending time at Yaddo, an artist's colony in upstate New York.
Her work appears in American Poetry Review, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's,Hudson Review, Ontario Review, Paris Review,The Nation.
Her ambition to be an artist was postponed when she entered college and became increasingly interested in the study of literature. She currently lives and works in Old Chatham, New York.
She has been the recipient of the Poetry Society of America's Gordon Barber Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship as well as a winner of the National Poetry Series and the Wesleyan New Poets Series.
Plot
A missing message from rogue mathematician Alan Turing surfaces as part of the celebrations for his 100th birthday... in code it provides the key to a century old puzzle that if solved will bestow academic immortality - and crash the world into chaos.
Keywords: enigma, math, mathematics
Is immortality worth dying for?
Plot
The highs and lows of Alan Turing's life, tracking his extraordinary accomplishments, his government persecution through to his tragic death in 1954. In the last 18 months of his short life, Turing visited a psychiatrist, Dr. Franz Greenbaum, who tried to help him. Each therapy session in this drama documentary is based on real events. The conversations between Turing and Greenbaum explore the pivotal moments in his controversial life and examine the pressures that may have contributed to his early death. The film also includes the testimony of people who actually knew and remember Turing. Plus, this film features interviews with contemporary experts from the world of technology and high science including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. These contributors bring Turing's exciting impact up to the present day, explaining why, in many ways, modern technology has only just begun to explore the potential of Turing's ideas.
Keywords: code-breaking, computer, drama-documentary, gay-interest, gay-man, gay-scientist, great-britain, homophobia, homosexuality, mathematician
Plot
A biography of the English mathematician Alan Turing, who was one of the inventors of the digital computer and one of the key figures in the breaking of the Enigma code, used by the Germans to send secret orders to their U-boats in World War II. Turing was also a homosexual in Britain at a time when this was illegal, besides being a security risk.
Keywords: based-on-book, based-on-play, closeted-homosexual, code, code-breaking, comic-relief, compassion, computer, computer-programmer, cryptography
Alan Turing: It's not breaking the code that matters - it's where you go from there.
[giving friendly advice to Turing about his homosexuality which was regarded as illegal at the time]::Dilwyn 'Dilly' Knox: I don't give a tuppenny damn whether you choose to go to bed with choirboys or cocker spaniels, but it would be wiser to keep your private life to yourself.