CIS Department Celebrates Life and Work of Alan Turing
In May, the CIS Department will honor renowned British mathematician Alan Turing for his pioneering contributions to the field of computer science, through a series of special colloquium talks.
Alan Turing is best known for breaking the German Enigma code during World War II. His theoretical and practical contributions to the development of modern computers as well as biology, artificial intelligence, artificial life, and philosophy, led Time magazine to list him among the 20th century's 100 greatest minds.
May 2, Mike Koss will give a presentation entitled Hands-on Enigma, describing the use of the Enigma machine by the Germans and the vulnerabilities that led it to be broken by the British at Bletchley Park, a group that included the eccentricTuring.
May 23, Professor Christof Teuscher, Portland State University will give a talk entitled Turing's Connectionism: A Modern Perspective. Dr. Teuscher will introduce Turing's original neural networks, extensions to them, and relate this body of work to contemporary work on random Boolean networks, nano- and molecular electronics, and computability theory.
May 28, Professor Martin Davis, Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley, will give a talk in our Distinguished Lecture Series entitled Alan Turing's Computers and Our Computers. Dr. Davis will tell the story of Turing's rich, eventful, and ultimately tragic life, as well as explain some of Turing's key contributions to computer science.
Please see http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/Activities/Public_Talks/ for the time and location of the talks.
In addition to this lecture series, UO's University Theater will present Breaking the Code, a biographical drama about Alan Turing's role in winning World War II by breaking the code used by the German Enigma machine. The play opens on May 30 and continues through June 9. See http://pages.uoregon.edu/theatre/201011-season for more information.
Although a half year late in our own celebrations, the CIS department is pleased to present our colloquium speakers, and to collaborate with the UO Library for a spring exhibit on Alan Turing and with the University Theater in bringing the play to campus. Many thanks to our department head, Professor Gene Luks for spearheading these efforts. And don't forget to greet the bust of Alan Turing on the south facade of Deschutes.
Also, see the story in Around the O about these events.