Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker

Invited Speakers

B. Jack Copeland

University of Canterbury, NZ

Title:
"Artificial Intelligence and the Turing Test"

CV:
Jack Copeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and is Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing. He works in mathematical and philosophical logic, cognitive science, and the history and foundations of computing, and has numerous articles in the journals, including Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Analysis, and Scientific American. He is author of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, second edition forthcoming) and is currently writing and editing several books on Turing, including one on Turing's Automatic Computing Engine, and is editing a volume for Oxford University Press to be entitled Colossus: The First Electronic Computer. Other work includes his edited volume Logic and Reality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).

Websites:
B. Jack Copeland
AlanTuring.net

Martin Davis

Professor Emeritus at New York University and Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley

Title:
"The Church-Turing Thesis: Has it been Superseded?"

CV:
Available here

Websites:
http://www.eipye.com
The Universal Computer

Andrew Hodges

Wadham College, University of Oxford, UK

Title:
"What would Alan Turing have done after 1954?"

Abstract:
This question cannot be answered! But this talk will discuss a range of topics that Alan Turing left unfinished at his death, relating them to his extraordinary life and personality, and to developments in the world he did not live to see.

CV:
Born 1949. Ph.D. (London), 1975.
Mathematical Physics group, University of Oxford, since 1985; Research in relativistic quantum field theory with Professor Sir Roger Penrose, FRS, OM.
Survey article: 'Twistor Diagrams,' in 'The Geometric Universe: Science, Geometry, and the work of Roger Penrose, eds. S. A. Huggett, L. J. Mason, K. P. Tod. S. T. Tsou and N. M. J. Woodhouse (Oxford University Press, 1998)'.
Lecturer in Mathematics, Wadham College, University of Oxford, since 1990.
Books on Alan Turing:
Alan Turing: the enigma (Burnett, London; Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983)
Turing: a natural philosopher (in the Great Philosophers series, Phoenix, London, 1997, and Routledge, New York, 1999).

Websites:
http://www.turing.org.uk
Alan Turing: the Enigma
Alan Turing: one of The Great Philosophers

Douglas R. Hofstadter

College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science, Indiana University, Bloomington
Visiting Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, University of Bologna

Title:
"The Strange Loop - from Epimenides to Cantor to Russell to Richard to Gödel to Turing to Tarski to von Neumann to Crick and Watson"

CV:
Ph.D. in physics, University of Oregon, 1975
Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction category), 1980
American Book Award (Science Hardback category), 1980 for Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
Guggenheim Fellow, 1980-81

Website:
Douglas R. Hofstadter

Tony Sale

Ex Museums Director, Bletchley Park, CodesAndCiphers.org.uk

Title:
"What did Turing do at Bletchley Park?"

Abstract:
Tony Sale will discuss Turing's work in designing the Turing Bombe, his statistical methods for code breaking, his breaking of German Naval Enigma and his help in breaking the German Lorenz teleprinter cipher.

CV:
After careers in the Royal Air Force and at MI5, Tony Sale started his own computer software company in 1968 which he ran, with his wife Margaret, for 12 years. Then followed Technical Director at the British Computer Society and Manager of Computer Restorations at the Science Museum in London. In 1991 he and some colleagues started the campaign to save Bletchley Park from destruction by property developers. He helped form the Bletchley Park Trust and became Museums Director. In 1993 he started the rebuild of the wartime code breaking Colossus computer and has researched, lectured and promoted world-wide the importance of the ground breaking work on cryptology by Alan Turing and many others at Bletchley Park in World War II. He was forced to resign as Museums Director in 1999 and has now created his own web site: http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk which is recognised as a prime source of information on World War II code breaking.

Website:
http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk