[SIGCIS-Members] Washington Post article about Turing

[John Impagliazzo]

Thanks, Paul.

Below is the link to the article for those who do not have access to it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/what-imitation-game-didnt-tell-you-about-alan-turings-greatest-triumph/2015/02/20/ffd210b6-b606-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html

John

John Impagliazzo, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Hofstra University
IEEE Life Fellow
ACM Distinguished Educator
Editor-in-Chief, ACM Inroads

From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Ceruzzi, Paul
Sent: Saturday, 21 February, 2015 08:47
To: sigcis
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Washington Post article about Turing


On the front page of today's Washington Post is an article by Joel Achenbach about Turing's 1936 paper and its influence on computer science. All well and good, except later on he quotes the Chair of the Computer Science Department at Princeton as saying "...Turing invented computer science and John von Neumann built the first stored-program computer." An example of The Matthew Effect ("them that's got shall have; them that's not shall lose").

Overall, Achenbach has written an very good summary of Turing's contributions. He also gets one thing right (unless I am mistaken): we really don't know to what extent von Neumann and Turing discussed these concepts when both were at Princeton.
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