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Alan M. Turing

1912
Born 23 June in London.

1931
Enters King's College, Cambridge as mathematical scholar.

1934
Graduates in Cambridge with distinction.

1935
Is elected Fellow of King's College for dissertation on the Central Limit Theorem of Probability.

1936
Goes to Princeton University where he works with Alonzo Church.

1937
(January) His article "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" is published in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. Wins Procter Fellowship at Princeton.

1939
Heads work on German naval "Enigma" encoding machine.

1940
In the beginning of this year, comes down to France to exchange experiences with those Polish mathematicians who in collaboration with the Polish Military Intelligence before the II World War discovered "Enigma" and worked out group-theoretical methods of decoding its messages, later enormously advanced by Turing.

1940
an early wartime programmable computer named Colossus. A series of those machines were built, the first being operational in 1943. Colossus was based on Turing's theoretical demonstration that a universal automaton, capable of carrying out a specified algorithmic calculation, is feasible.

1942
sails to USA to establish liason with American code-breakers.

1943
At Bell Laboratories in New York, the work on speech-encypherment, continued in England, 1944, in his own encypherment project.

1945
draws up a complete design of a stored-program machine MOSAIC, meant as a "universal machine". The key idea was to keep the program, as well as the data, in electronic memory (this basic concept remaining unchanged for 50 years). In June is offered post with National Physical Laboratory at Teddington and begins work on ACE (Automatic Computing Engine).

1947
Severs relations with ACE project and returns to Cambridge.

1948
Moves to Manchester University to work on prototype computer. Addresses National Physics Laboratory with the Report "Intelligent Machinery".

1950
Publishes "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" in Mind.

1951
Is elected FRS. Has become intersted in problems of morphogenesis.

1952
His article "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" is published in Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society.

1954
Dies by his own hand (7 June).