Turing’s Legacy

Posted by Tom Leinster

You’ve probably heard about The Imitation Game, a film about Alan Turing’s life starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Maybe you’ve seen it.

On Sunday, the Edinburgh Filmhouse hosted a special event, “The Maths Behind The Imitation Game”, organized by Edinburgh undergraduates and the department’s Mathematics Engagement Officer, Julia Collins. To my surprise, it was packed out, with a hundred or so people in the audience, and more queuing for returns. Someone did a great job on publicity.

The event consisted of three talks, followed by Q&A. I gave one of them. Later, Julia wrote a blog post on each talk — these are nicely-written, and say much more than I’m going to say here.

John Longley from Informatics spoke on computability and abstract notions of computation. Julia’s write-up is here.

I spoke on the legacy of Turing’s code-breaking work at Bletchley Park, comparing and contrasting things then and now. The notes for my talk are here, and Julia’s post on it is here.

Jamie Davies, an expert on the formation of tissues in mammals, spoke on the aspect of Turing’s work that’s perhaps least familiar to pure mathematicians: pattern formation and morphogenesis. For instance, you once consisted of just a single pair of cells. How did something so simple know how to develop into something as complex as you? Julia’s post is here.

Posted at December 16, 2014 6:02 PM UTC