LITE 2016 – Alan Turing to Afoako [Nicki Turing & Edmund Pinto]
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Alan Turing to Afoako This document contains a family tree of Alan Turing, showing his parents and siblings. It also includes school reports from Alan Turing from 1926-1931 noting that he was easily the best mathematician but was untidy and cared little about elementary problems, instead preferring more advanced mathematics. The document concludes with quotes from Turing about the capabilities of machines and the potential for machines to complete on equal terms with human intellect in various fields.
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LITE 2016 – Alan Turing to Afoako [Nicki Turing & Edmund Pinto]
- 1. Alan Turing to Afoako Nicola Turing and Edmund Pinto
- 3. Turing Family Tree Julius Mathison Turing 1873-1947 Ethel Sara (Stoney) Turing 1891-1976 m.1907 John Ferrier Turing 1908-1983 Nicola (Simmonds) Turing 1960 m.1986 John Dermot Turing 1961 James Turing 1991 John Turing 1988 Beryl (Hann) Turing 1931 m.1960 Alan Mathison Turing 1912-1954 Shuna Hunt 1940 Inagh Payne 1936 Joan (Humphreys) Turing 1910-2008 m.1934 Janet Robinson 1947
- 5. 1926-1931 School Reports - Mathematics 1927 Not very good. He spends a good deal of time apparently in investigations in advanced mathematics to the neglect of his elementary work. A sound ground work is essential in any subject. His work is dirty. 1928 Easily the best mathematician in the set. His position is caused by untidiness and carelessness due largely to impatience to let on something great as soon as he has seen his way through a problem. 1930 A really able mathematician. His trouble is his untidiness & poor style, but he has tried hard to improve in this. He sometimes fails over a simple problem by trying to do it by complicated methods, instead of by an elementary one.
- 8. Mr Turing said “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be …..” “I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by human intellect and eventually complete on equal terms.” “…..research directed to finding the degree of intellectual activity of which a machine was capable, and to what extent it could think for itself.”
- 9. Manchester Mark 1 February 1951 Contour map in base 32 digits, indicating levels of chemical intensity
- 10. 17th May 2016
- 11. 17th May 2016 11
- 12. 17th May 2016 12 Training is really important!
- 13. 13 Fully functioning computer laboratory Preparing to set up computer laboratory IT Equipment for Administration only No IT resources No information ICCES currently closed ICCES Computer Labs, Ghana
- 14. 22nd September 2016 www.turingtrust.co.uk 14
- 15. 22nd September 2016 www.turingtrust.co.uk 15 • Hubs in Edinburgh, Ghana and Malawi • Maximise reuse of IT equipment to bridge to rural / urban digital divide in Africa • SolarBerry • Customise and further develop e-learning resources for Ghana and Malawi • Training • Sustainable systems for maintenance and replacement of IT resources, including effective disposal of any e-waste What are our ambitions?
- 16. 22nd September 2016 www.turingtrust.co.uk 16 • Partnership • Fundraising • Computer & other IT equipment donations • Volunteering How can you help?
Editor's Notes
- Of course we all know about Alan Turing – we’ve seen the film. But whilst the film is a great movie (and it is exactly that), it is not a documentary and I thought I would try and fill in some of the gaps and explain how we feel we are honouring Alan’s amazing legacy by sending refurbished computers out to Africa.
- I am going to start with Alan’s immediate family tree. On the Turing side, there was a long history of service in British India, but it is more likely that Alan’s aptitude for science and mathematics came from his Stoney ancestors. They number amongst them 3 Fellows of the Royal Society: George Stoney coined the term “electron”, Bindon Stoney was known as the “father of Irish concrete” and another George Stoney, son of the older George, designed steam turbine engines.
- I have alluded to the history of the Turing’s in India. Julius worked for the Indian Civil Service and John, Alan’s older brother was born and spent the first 4 years of his life in India. I think this picture sums up what a different world that was. When Ethel was pregnant with Alan, they decided that he should be born in England and that the 2 boys should then remain in England with a foster family, the Wards, whilst their parents went back to India. This photo shows the Turings at the beach – Ethel having braved the U boats in 1915 to visit her children. And here is Alan aged 5, perfectly turned out in a sailor suit. So whilst Alan’s childhood was not what we would class as ideal today, it was no different from many Empire children and by all accounts his mother had chosen their foster family well.
- So how did Alan get on at school? You will all have heard from the Imitation Game how he found a kindred spirit in Christopher Morcom. However, this is not Christopher with Alan in this photo – this is another maths student at Sherborne, Pat Mermagen. I have picked a few comments from Alan’s school reports that suggest that perhaps he wasn’t the easiest student to teach – and these were the maths reports. Reports in subjects that he was not particularly interested in were even less complimentary – but even in Latin, which was essential to pass in those days if you wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge, he managed to do much better in the exams than perhaps suggested by his work during the rest of the term.
- He also had a sense of humour as shown here in his first published mathematical formula in the Weakly Worm, a Sherborne school magazine. Knowing the importance of passing Latin, this formula, dating from just after Christopher Morcom died, is all about how a Latin student can work out how many credits he is going to get in his public exams. On the right of the slide is a photo of Bonzo, which looks like a loo brush and features in Alan’s equation – both in terms of momentum and also angle of inclincation on impact with hind quarters of boy. Application of the formula results in the advice to eat as many ice buns as possible, put on weight, avoid Bonzo and humour your master so he will not beat you hard.
- Alan then moves on to King’s College Cambridge and it is here that he wrote his seminal paper “On Computable Numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem”. At Cambridge he was taught by Max Newman (who is the figure on the left of this slide). Alan attended a series of lectures by Max Newman who was lecturing on the fundamental rules that underpin mathematics – and in particular sparked Alan’s interest by asking whether you could devise a mechanical process that you could apply to any mathematical theorem to know whether it is provable or not. The result was this remarkable paper in which Alan sets out the blueprint for a Universal Computing Machine. Up until this point, all computing machinery had been single purpose, and the leap of imagination was that you could have a machine where you could change its function by providing a set of instructions (or program as we would now call it).
- After the war Alan was appointed to head the Mathematics Division of the National Physical Laboratory in October 1945 and spent the next 2 months designing a programmable electronic computer (to be called ACE – Automatic Computing Engine). This design included provision for memory and programming. However, the ACE suffered the fate of government IT projects and the usual delays due to a combination of austerity and bureaucracy and in frustration Alan accepted Max Newman’s offer of a job and moved Manchester in May 1948 . The Pilot ACE didn’t run its first program until 1950, but with a clock speed of 1MHz at the time it was the fastest computer in the world. The first production versions were not delivered until 1955, after Alan had died. This photo, however is of the Manchester baby, born in June 1948, variously described by the press as “the mechanical brain” and a “marvel of our time”. It only had a memory of 1024 bits, but Max Newman used it to prove that Mersenne had got some of his results wrong. The theory was that numbers of the form 2n-1 are prime numbers – but I am sure you always wanted to know that in fact 2257 -1 is not a prime number. However, as the quotes from the Times show, Alan was already thinking well ahead.
- The Manchester baby had proved the concept and in February 1951 the Manchester/Ferranti Mark 1 was switched on, with a programming manual provided by Alan. However, for Alan, the computer was now a tool to be used and he moved on to pursue his interest in developmental biology. He was particularly interested in the idea that the diffusion of chemicals from developing cells in organisms might explain how they then develop. The picture on the left is a contour map showing the concentration of chemicals, produced from the reaction-diffusion differential equations and demonstrating how you could produce a pattern similar to that seen in Friesian cows. So you can see that not only was Alan already thinking about artificial intelligence, he was also working in areas of biology that are still topical today – and the science is only now catching up and proving that there is a chemical basis to his diffusion equations.
- So how does Alan Turing fit into the Africa story? You remember that Alan’s foster parents were called Ward – well Alan kept in touch with Hazel Ward for more than 30 years and after her parents died he paid for her to fulfil her life’s ambition and go to work in Africa. Here we have another member of the Turing family who had also dreamt of going to Africa. This is James working at Afoako in Ghana. Perhaps not quite a natural at carrying things on his head – but with a passion to make a difference and so founded the Turing Trust whilst he was still in Afoako. I am now going to hand you over to Eddie to tell you a bit more about Afoako and the work of the Turing Trust in Ghana.
- “The Afoako story” Buildings Security Power Opening of showcase lab ?summer computer workshops What do the students and teachers think?
- We have realised that it is really important to offer training in both computer maintenance and repair, but also in the use of the educational packages we include. These photos were from a week long training session for students, many of whom had never left their villages before, on data visualisation. This has inspired the set up of ICT clubs which are now doing some great work.
- This map shows the current state of play in the ICCES in Ghana – the main challenges in deploying further IT equipment are more around power and buildings, particularly in the more remote areas, than around our ability to provide the equipment.
- However, the ICCES are not the only schools in Ghana in need of equipment. It has also been a challenge for younger students to access IT resources and we have now set up computer labs in a total of 16 Junior High Schools ion addition to the ICCES and continue to receive on average 5 applications for help a month.