San Antonio College Library

Examines the life of Alan Turing, a mathematician who cracked the German's Enigma code during World War II and laid ground work for modern computers.

Turing can be regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. But who was Turing, and what did he achieve during his tragically short life of 41 years? Best known as the genius who broke Germany's most secret codes during the war of 1939-45, Turing was also the father of the modern computer. Today, all who 'click-to-open' are familiar with the impact of Turing's ideas. Here, B. Jack Copeland provides an account of Turing's life and...

"During the winter of 1952, British authorities entered the home of mathematician, cryptanalyst and war hero Alan Turing to investigate a reported burglary. They instead ended up arresting Turing himself on charges of "gross indecency," an accusation that would lead to his devastating conviction for the criminal offense of homosexuality - little did officials know, they were actually incriminating the pioneer of modern-day computing. Famously leading...

In this program, Professor Marcus du Sautoy lifts the veil on algorithms that touch our lives every day; most of us are unaware of their extraordinary impact. The expansion in the use of algorithms has coincided with the computer age and the collation of big data. We focus on the most interesting and surprising examples which represent different categories of algorithms and look into the historical example of Euclid's Algorithm from two and half thousand...

In this book the author re-creates the scenes of focused experimentation, incredible mathematical insight, and pure creative genius that gave us computers, digital television, modern genetics, models of stellar evolution, in other words, computer code. In the 1940s and '50s, a group of eccentric geniuses, led by John von Neumann, gathered at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Their joint project was the realization...