Alan Turing (June 23 , 1912 - June 7 , 1954 )
British mathematician and cryptographer , considered to be one of the fathers of modern Computer Science .
- "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
- Source: his paper on the Turing Test
- "His high pitched voice already stood out above the general murmur of well-behaved junior executives grooming themselves for promotion within the Bell corporation. Then he was suddenly heard to say: 'No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.'"
- Source: A Hodges - Alan Turing: the Enigma of Intelligence, (London 1983) 251.
- Occurred in 1943, New York: the Bell Labs Cafeteria
- "Science is a differential equation . Religion is a boundary condition ."
- Source: J D Barrow - Theories of everything
- "...I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted."
- "Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity."
- "In the time of Galileo it was argued that the texts, 'And the sun stood still ... and hasted not to go down about a whole day' (Joshua x. 13) and 'He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not move at any time' (Psalm cv. 5) were an adequate refutation of the Copernican theory."
- Source: Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Mind 59 (1950), 443.
- "A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal Turing Machine ."
- "The idea behind digital computers may be explained by saying that these machines are intended to carry out any operations which could be done by a human computer."
