1912-1954. British mathematician and
logician. In 1936 he described a `universal
computing machine' that could theoretically
be programmed to solve any problem capable of
solution by a specially designed machine.
This concept, now called the Turing machine,
foreshadowed the digital computer. Turing
studied at King's College, Cambridge, and
became a fellow there in 1935. He studied at
Princeton 1936-38. During World War II he
worked on the Ultra project in the team that
cracked the German Enigma code. He is
believed to have been the first to suggest
the possibility of machine learning and
artificial intelligence.