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128-490: The main parts of the system were designed by then- Cambridge -undergraduate student Sophie Wilson , with a cassette interface designed by Steve Furber . It was Acorn's first product, and was based on an automated cow feeder. It was a small machine built on two Eurocard -standard circuit boards and it could be purchased ready-built or in kit form. Main Components (left to right) Almost all CPU signals were accessible via

256-406: A Turing machine will ever halt. This paper has been called "easily the most influential math paper in history". Although Turing's proof was published shortly after Church's equivalent proof using his lambda calculus , Turing's approach is considerably more accessible and intuitive than Church's. It also included a notion of a 'Universal Machine' (now known as a universal Turing machine ), with

384-781: A ban) was used in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher . Turing travelled to the United States in November 1942 and worked with US Navy cryptanalysts on the naval Enigma and bombe construction in Washington. He also visited their Computing Machine Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio . Turing's reaction to the American bombe design was far from enthusiastic: The American Bombe programme was to produce 336 Bombes, one for each wheel order. I used to smile inwardly at

512-461: A brief period after the turn of the 20th century, this allowed the steamboat ladies to receive ad eundem degrees from the University of Dublin . In 1998, a special graduation ceremony was held in which the women who attended Cambridge before admission was allowed in 1948 were finally conferred their degrees. Beginning in 1921, women were awarded diplomas that conferred the title associated with

640-422: A broad administrative grouping of related faculties and other units. Each has an elected supervisory body known as a Council, composed of representatives of the various constituent bodies. The University of Cambridge maintains six such schools: Teaching and research at the university is organised by faculties. The faculties have varying organisational substructures that partly reflect their respective histories and

768-503: A campaign in 2009, British prime minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology for "the appalling way [Turing] was treated". Queen Elizabeth II granted a pardon in 2013. The term " Alan Turing law " is used informally to refer to a 2017 law in the UK that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. Turing left an extensive legacy in mathematics and computing which today

896-421: A central object of study in theory of computation . From September 1936 to July 1938, Turing spent most of his time studying under Church at Princeton University , in the second year as a Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow . In addition to his purely mathematical work, he studied cryptology and also built three of four stages of an electro-mechanical binary multiplier . In June 1938, he obtained his PhD from

1024-569: A common law corporation. Its corporate titles include the Chancellor , Masters, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge. The college faculties are responsible for giving lectures, arranging seminars, performing research, and determining the syllabi for teaching, all of which is overseen by the university's general board. Together with the central administration headed by the Vice-Chancellor ,

1152-432: A complete range of academic specialties and related courses. Some colleges maintain a relative strength and associated reputation for expertise in certain academic disciplines. Churchill , for example, has a reputation for its expertise and focus on the sciences and engineering, in part due to the requirement imposed by Winston Churchill upon the college's founding that 70% of its students studied mathematics, engineering, and

1280-428: A cryptanalyst who worked with Turing, said of his colleague: In the first week of June each year he would get a bad attack of hay fever, and he would cycle to the office wearing a service gas mask to keep the pollen off. His bicycle had a fault: the chain would come off at regular intervals. Instead of having it mended he would count the number of times the pedals went round and would get off the bicycle in time to adjust

1408-540: A doctorate degree from Princeton University . During World War II , Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park , Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. He led Hut 8 , the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Turing devised techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers , including improvements to the pre-war Polish bomba method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for

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1536-641: A global leader in the study of mathematics. The university's examination in mathematics, known as the Mathematical Tripos , was initially compulsory for all undergraduates studying for the Bachelor of Arts degree, the most common degree first offered at Cambridge. From the time of Isaac Newton in the late 17th century until the mid-19th century, the university maintained an especially strong emphasis on applied mathematics , and especially mathematical physics . Students awarded first class honours after completing

1664-435: A large number of traditions, myths, and legends. Some are true, some are not, and some were true but have been discontinued but have been propagated nonetheless by generations of students and tour guides. One such discontinued tradition is that of the wooden spoon , the prize awarded to the student with the lowest passing honours grade in the final examinations of the university's Mathematical Tripos . The last of these spoons

1792-536: A little the same about me ... I know I must put as much energy if not as much interest into my work as if he were alive, because that is what he would like me to do. Turing's relationship with Morcom's mother continued long after Morcom's death, with her sending gifts to Turing, and him sending letters, typically on Morcom's birthday. A day before the third anniversary of Morcom's death (13 February 1933), he wrote to Mrs. Morcom: I expect you will be thinking of Chris when this reaches you. I shall too, and this letter

1920-485: A lower age demographic in the city. Most of the university's older colleges are located near the city centre, through which River Cam flows. Students and others traditionally punt on the River Cam, which provides views of the university's buildings that surround the river. A few of the notable University of Cambridge buildings are King's College Chapel ; the history faculty building designed by James Stirling ; and

2048-401: A result, the university received its first systematic state support in 1919, and a Royal commission was appointed in 1920 to recommend that the university (but not its colleges) begin receiving an annual grant. Following World War II , the university experienced a rapid expansion in applications and enrollment, partly due to the success and popularity gained by many Cambridge scientists. This

2176-489: A sensibility of such profundity and originality that one is filled with wonder and excitement. Alan Turing was such a genius, and those, like myself, who had the astonishing and unexpected opportunity, created by the strange exigencies of the Second World War, to be able to count Turing as colleague and friend will never forget that experience, nor can we ever lose its immense benefit to us. Hilton echoed similar thoughts in

2304-488: A university department. The colleges also decide which undergraduates to admit to the university, in accordance with university standards and regulations. Costs to students for room and board vary considerably from college to college. Similarly, the investment in student education by each college at the university varies widely between the colleges. Cambridge has 31 colleges, two of which, Murray Edwards and Newnham , admit women only. The other colleges are mixed . Darwin

2432-604: A variety of checks and balances. The council is obliged to advise Regent House on matters of general concern to the university, which it does by publishing notices to the Cambridge University Reporter , the university's official journal. In March 2008, Regent House voted to increase from two to four the number of external members on the council, and this was approved by Her Majesty the Queen in July 2008. The General Board of

2560-562: A version of the central limit theorem . It was finally accepted on 16 March 1935. By spring of that same year, Turing started his master's course (Part III)—which he completed in 1937—and, at the same time, he published his first paper, a one-page article called Equivalence of left and right almost periodicity (sent on 23 April), featured in the tenth volume of the Journal of the London Mathematical Society . Later that year, Turing

2688-624: Is Deborah Prentice , who began her role in July 2023. While the Chancellor's office is ceremonial, the Vice-Chancellor serves as the university's de facto principal administrative officer. The university's internal governance is carried out almost entirely by Regent House augmented by some external representation from the Audit Committee and four external members of the University's Council . The university Senate consists of all holders of

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2816-407: Is a collegiate university , which means that its colleges are self-governing and independent, each with its own property, endowments, and income. Most colleges bring together academics and students from a broad range of disciplines. Each faculty, school, or department at the university includes academics affiliated with differing colleges. The university is legally structured as an exempt charity and

2944-590: Is a genius". Between January 1922 and 1926, Turing was educated at Hazelhurst Preparatory School, an independent school in the village of Frant in Sussex (now East Sussex ). In 1926, at the age of 13, he went on to Sherborne School , an independent boarding school in the market town of Sherborne in Dorset, where he boarded at Westcott House. The first day of term coincided with the 1926 General Strike , in Britain, but Turing

3072-464: Is based in Addenbrooke's Hospital , where medical students undergo their three-year clinical placement period after obtaining their BA degree. The West Cambridge site is undergoing a major expansion and will host new buildings and fields for university sports. Since 1990, Cambridge Judge Business School , on Trumpington Street , provides management education courses and is consistently ranked among

3200-497: Is held currently by David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville , who succeeded the Duke of Edinburgh following his retirement on his 90th birthday in June 2011. Lord Sainsbury was nominated by the nomination board. The election took place on 14 and 15 October 2011 with Sainsbury taking 2,893 of the 5,888 votes cast, and winning on the election's first count. The current vice-chancellor

3328-492: Is just to tell you that I shall be thinking of Chris and of you tomorrow. I am sure that he is as happy now as he was when he was here. Your affectionate Alan. Some have speculated that Morcom's death was the cause of Turing's atheism and materialism . Apparently, at this point in his life he still believed in such concepts as a spirit, independent of the body and surviving death. In a later letter, also written to Morcom's mother, Turing wrote: Personally, I believe that spirit

3456-453: Is possible that he managed to deduce Einstein's questioning of Newton's laws of motion from a text in which this was never made explicit. At Sherborne, Turing formed a significant friendship with fellow pupil Christopher Collan Morcom (13 July 1911 – 13 February 1930), who has been described as Turing's first love. Their relationship provided inspiration in Turing's future endeavours, but it

3584-403: Is really eternally connected with matter but certainly not by the same kind of body ... as regards the actual connection between spirit and body I consider that the body can hold on to a 'spirit', whilst the body is alive and awake the two are firmly connected. When the body is asleep I cannot guess what happens but when the body dies, the 'mechanism' of the body, holding the spirit is gone and

3712-524: Is recognised more widely, with statues and many things named after him , including an annual award for computing innovation. His portrait appears on the Bank of England £50 note , first released on 23 June 2021 to coincide with his birthday. The audience vote in a 2019 BBC series named Turing the greatest person of the 20th century. Turing was born in Maida Vale , London, while his father, Julius Mathison Turing,

3840-422: Is to stay at public school, he must aim at becoming educated . If he is to be solely a Scientific Specialist , he is wasting his time at a public school". Despite this, Turing continued to show remarkable ability in the studies he loved, solving advanced problems in 1927 without having studied even elementary calculus . In 1928, aged 16, Turing encountered Albert Einstein 's work; not only did he grasp it, but it

3968-478: The Cambridge Theological Federation and associated in partnership with the university. The University of Cambridge's 31 colleges are: In addition to the 31 colleges, the university maintains over 150 departments, faculties, schools, syndicates, and other academic institutions. Members of these are usually members of one of the colleges, and responsibility for the entire academic programme of

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4096-467: The Department of Mathematics at Princeton; his dissertation, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals , introduced the concept of ordinal logic and the notion of relative computing , in which Turing machines are augmented with so-called oracles , allowing the study of problems that cannot be solved by Turing machines. John von Neumann wanted to hire him as his postdoctoral assistant , but he went back to

4224-824: The Enigma machine . He played a crucial role in cracking intercepted messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis powers in many engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic . After the war, Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory , where he designed the Automatic Computing Engine , one of the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1948, Turing joined Max Newman 's Computing Machine Laboratory at

4352-997: The Fitzwilliam Museum and Cambridge University Botanic Garden . Cambridge's 116 libraries hold a total of approximately 16 million books, around nine million of which are in Cambridge University Library , a legal deposit library and one of the world's largest academic libraries . Cambridge alumni, academics, and affiliates have won 124 Nobel Prizes. Among the university's notable alumni are 194 Olympic medal -winning athletes and several historically iconic and transformational individuals in their respective fields, including Francis Bacon , Lord Byron , Oliver Cromwell , Charles Darwin , Rajiv Gandhi , John Harvard , Stephen Hawking , John Maynard Keynes , John Milton , Vladimir Nabokov , Jawaharlal Nehru , Isaac Newton , Sylvia Plath , Bertrand Russell , Alan Turing , Ludwig Wittgenstein , and others. Prior to

4480-681: The MA or higher degrees and is responsible for electing the Chancellor and the High Steward. Until 1950 when the Cambridge University constituency was abolished, it was also responsible for electing two members of the House of Commons . Prior to 1926, the university Senate was the university's governing body, fulfilling the functions that Regent House has provided since. Regent House is the university's governing body, comprising all resident senior members of

4608-464: The Mathematical Tripos , with extra courses at the end of the third year, as Part III only emerged as a separate degree in 1934) from February 1931 to November 1934 at King's College, Cambridge , where he was awarded first-class honours in mathematics. His dissertation, On the Gaussian error function , written during his senior year and delivered in November 1934 (with a deadline date of 6 December) proved

4736-484: The Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society journal in two parts, the first on 30 November and the second on 23 December. In this paper, Turing reformulated Kurt Gödel 's 1931 results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Gödel's universal arithmetic-based formal language with the formal and simple hypothetical devices that became known as Turing machines . The Entscheidungsproblem (decision problem)

4864-521: The Turing baronets . Turing's father's civil service commission was still active during Turing's childhood years, and his parents travelled between Hastings in the United Kingdom and India, leaving their two sons to stay with a retired Army couple. At Hastings, Turing stayed at Baston Lodge , Upper Maze Hill, St Leonards-on-Sea , now marked with a blue plaque. The plaque was unveiled on 23 June 2012,

4992-480: The University of Cambridge's Chancellor was given special powers allowing him to prosecute criminals and reestablish order in the city. Attempts at reconciliation between the city's residents and students followed; in the 16th century, agreements were signed to improve the quality of streets and student accommodation around the city. However, this was followed by new confrontations when the plague reached Cambridge in 1630 and colleges refused to assist those affected by

5120-599: The Victoria University of Manchester , where he helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology . Turing wrote on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction , first observed in the 1960s. Despite these accomplishments, he was never fully recognised during his lifetime because much of his work

5248-432: The souls of the founders. University of Cambridge colleges were often associated with chapels or abbeys . The colleges' focus began to shift in 1536, however, with the dissolution of the monasteries and Henry VIII 's order that the university disband the canon law that governed the university's faculty and stop teaching scholastic philosophy . In response, colleges changed their curricula from canon law to classics ,

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5376-465: The Bachelor of Arts degree. But since women were not yet admitted to the Bachelor of Arts degree program, they were excluded from the university's governance structure. Since University of Cambridge students must belong to a college, and since established colleges remained closed to women, women found admissions restricted to the few university colleges that had been established only for them. Darwin College ,

5504-625: The Bible, and mathematics. Nearly a century later, the university found itself at the centre of a Protestant schism. Many nobles, intellectuals, and also commoners saw the Church of England as too similar to the Catholic Church and felt that it was being used by The Crown to usurp the counties' rightful powers. East Anglia emerged as the centre of what ultimately became the Puritan movement . In Cambridge,

5632-560: The Cambridge Teaching College for Women, Murray Edwards College , founded in 1954 by Rosemary Murray as New Hall , and Lucy Cavendish College , founded in 1965. Prior to ultimately being permitted admission to the university in 1948, female students were granted the right to take University of Cambridge exams beginning in the late 19th century. Women were also allowed to study courses, take examinations, and have prior exam results recorded retroactively, dating back to 1881; for

5760-608: The Enigma cipher machine used by Nazi Germany , together with Dilly Knox , a senior GC&CS codebreaker. Soon after the July 1939 meeting near Warsaw at which the Polish Cipher Bureau gave the British and French details of the wiring of Enigma machine's rotors and their method of decrypting Enigma machine 's messages, Turing and Knox developed a broader solution. The Polish method relied on an insecure indicator procedure that

5888-453: The Faculties is responsible for the university's academic and educational policies and is accountable to the council for its management of these affairs. Faculty boards are accountable to the general board; other boards and syndicates are accountable either to the general board or to the council. Under this organizational structure, the university's various arms are kept under supervision of both

6016-575: The Germans were likely to change, which they in fact did in May 1940. Turing's approach was more general, using crib-based decryption for which he produced the functional specification of the bombe (an improvement on the Polish Bomba ). On 4 September 1939, the day after the UK declared war on Germany, Turing reported to Bletchley Park, the wartime station of GC&CS. Like all others who came to Bletchley, he

6144-637: The ICS brought the family to British India, where his grandfather had been a general in the Bengal Army . However, both Julius and Ethel wanted their children to be brought up in Britain, so they moved to Maida Vale , London, where Alan Turing was born on 23 June 1912, as recorded by a blue plaque on the outside of the house of his birth, later the Colonnade Hotel . Turing had an elder brother, John Ferrier Turing, father of Sir John Dermot Turing , 12th Baronet of

6272-552: The New Court and Cripps Buildings at St John's College . The brickwork of several colleges is notable: Queens' College has some of the earliest patterned brickwork in England and the brick walls of St John's College are examples of English bond , Flemish bond , and Running bond . The university is divided into several sites, which house the university's various departments, including: The university's School of Clinical Medicine

6400-568: The Nova PBS documentary Decoding Nazi Secrets . While working at Bletchley, Turing, who was a talented long-distance runner , occasionally ran the 40 miles (64 km) to London when he was needed for meetings, and he was capable of world-class marathon standards. Turing tried out for the 1948 British Olympic team , but he was hampered by an injury. His tryout time for the marathon was only 11 minutes slower than British silver medallist Thomas Richards ' Olympic race time of 2 hours 35 minutes. He

6528-628: The Puritan movement was particularly strong at Emmanuel , St Catharine Hall , Sidney Sussex , and Christ's . These colleges produced many nonconformist graduates who greatly influenced, by social position or preaching, some 20,000 Puritans who ultimately left England for New England and especially Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s, settling in the colonial-era Colony of Virginia and other fledgling American colonies. The university quickly established itself as

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6656-446: The Second World War, Turing was a leading participant in the breaking of German ciphers at Bletchley Park . The historian and wartime codebreaker Asa Briggs has said, "You needed exceptional talent, you needed genius at Bletchley and Turing's was that genius." From September 1938, Turing worked part-time with the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), the British codebreaking organisation. He concentrated on cryptanalysis of

6784-502: The Tripos system, feeling that students were becoming too focused on accumulating high exam marks at the expense of the subject itself. Pure mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the 19th century achieved great things, though it largely missed out on substantial developments in French and German mathematics. By the early 20th century, however, pure mathematical research at Cambridge reached

6912-464: The UK, endowment reserve stood at £2.469 billion. The 31 colleges reported collective endowment reserve of £4.582 billion . In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2023, the central university, excluding colleges, reported total consolidated income of £2.518 billion, of which £569.5 million was from research grants and contracts. In July 2022, the Dear World, Yours Cambridge Campaign for

7040-510: The United Kingdom to pursue full-time postgraduate study at Cambridge. In October 2021, the university suspended its £400m collaboration with the United Arab Emirates , citing allegations that UAE was involved in illegal hacking of the university's computer and storage systems using NSO Group 's Pegasus software. UAE also was behind the leak of over 50,000 phone numbers, including hundreds belonging to British citizens. Stephen Toope ,

7168-493: The United Kingdom. When Turing returned to Cambridge, he attended lectures given in 1939 by Ludwig Wittgenstein about the foundations of mathematics . The lectures have been reconstructed verbatim, including interjections from Turing and other students, from students' notes. Turing and Wittgenstein argued and disagreed, with Turing defending formalism and Wittgenstein propounding his view that mathematics does not discover any absolute truths, but rather invents them. During

7296-442: The University of Cambridge is the world's third-oldest university in continuous operation . The university's founding followed the arrival of scholars who left the University of Oxford for Cambridge after a dispute with local townspeople. The two ancient English universities, although sometimes described as rivals, share many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge . In 1231, 22 years after its founding,

7424-541: The arts, architecture, and archaeology were donated by Viscount Fitzwilliam of Trinity College , who also founded Fitzwilliam Museum in 1816. In 1847, Prince Albert was elected the university's chancellor in a close contest with the Earl of Powis . As chancellor, Albert reformed university curricula beyond its initial focus on mathematics and classics, adding modern era history and the natural sciences . Between 1896 and 1902, Downing College sold part of its land to permit

7552-414: The bombe performed a chain of logical deductions based on the crib, implemented electromechanically . The bombe detected when a contradiction had occurred and ruled out that setting, moving on to the next. Most of the possible settings would cause contradictions and be discarded, leaving only a few to be investigated in detail. A contradiction would occur when an enciphered letter would be turned back into

7680-497: The bombes; developing a procedure dubbed Turingery for working out the cam settings of the wheels of the Lorenz SZ 40/42 ( Tunny ) cipher machine and, towards the end of the war, the development of a portable secure voice scrambler at Hanslope Park that was codenamed Delilah . By using statistical techniques to optimise the trial of different possibilities in the code breaking process, Turing made an innovative contribution to

7808-505: The centenary of Turing's birth. Very early in life, Turing's parents purchased a house in Guildford in 1927, and Turing lived there during school holidays. The location is also marked with a blue plaque. Turing's parents enrolled him at St Michael's, a primary school at 20 Charles Road, St Leonards-on-Sea , from the age of six to nine. The headmistress recognised his talent, noting that she "...had clever boys and hardworking boys, but Alan

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7936-516: The central administration and Regent House. The Cambridge University Endowment Fund is the main vehicle of investment for the University. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2023, the university group, excluding colleges, reported a total endowment of £3.736 billion. The figure includes both restricted and unrestricted funds. When reported strictly using Statements of Recommended Practice (SORPs) guidelines, which accounted for only donations that meet certain criteria among non-profit organizations in

8064-505: The centuries. During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, strong clashes led to attacks and looting of university properties as locals contested the privileges granted by the British government to the University of Cambridge's academic staff. Residents burned university property in Market Square to the famed rallying cry " Away with the learning of clerks, away with it! ". Following these events,

8192-516: The chain by hand. Another of his eccentricities is that he chained his mug to the radiator pipes to prevent it being stolen. Peter Hilton recounted his experience working with Turing in Hut 8 in his "Reminiscences of Bletchley Park" from A Century of Mathematics in America: It is a rare experience to meet an authentic genius. Those of us privileged to inhabit the world of scholarship are familiar with

8320-546: The chancellor and the guild of scholars granted the new university ius non trahi extra , or the right not to be drawn out, for three years, meaning its members could not be summoned to a court outside of the diocese of Ely. After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter from Pope Nicholas IV in 1290, and confirmed as such by Pope John XXII 's 1318 papal bull , it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to visit Cambridge to study or give lecture courses. The 31 colleges of

8448-464: The chief of the secret service reported that every possible measure was being taken. The cryptographers at Bletchley Park did not know of the Prime Minister's response, but as Milner-Barry recalled, "All that we did notice was that almost from that day the rough ways began miraculously to be made smooth." More than two hundred bombes were in operation by the end of the war. Turing decided to tackle

8576-516: The college faculties make up the University of Cambridge. Facilities such as libraries are provided on all these levels by the university. The Cambridge University Library is the university's largest and primary library. Squire Law Library is the primary library for the university's students of law . Individual colleges each maintain a multi-discipline library designed for each college's respective undergraduates. College libraries tend to operate 24/7 and their usage in generally restricted to members of

8704-514: The college. Conversely, libraries operated by departments are generally open to all students of the university, regardless of subject. The colleges are self-governing institutions with their own endowments and property, each founded as components of the university. All students and most academics are attached to a college. The colleges' importance lies in the housing, welfare, social functions, and undergraduate teaching they provide. All faculties, departments, research centres, and laboratories belong to

8832-511: The colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, managing their own personnel and policies, and all students are required to have a college affiliation within the university. Undergraduate teaching at Cambridge is centred on weekly small-group supervisions in the colleges with lectures, seminars, laboratory work, and occasionally further supervision provided by the central university faculties and departments. The university operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including

8960-399: The committee went so far as to say that if Turing's work had been published before Lindeberg's, it would have been "an important event in the mathematical literature of that year". Between the springs of 1935 and 1936, at the same time as Alonzo Church , Turing worked on the decidability of problems, starting from Gödel's incompleteness theorems . In mid-April 1936, Turing sent Max Newman

9088-519: The construction of Downing Site , the university's grouping of scientific laboratories for the study of anatomy , genetics , and Earth sciences . During this period, the New Museums Site was erected, including the Cavendish Laboratory , which has since moved to West Cambridge , and other departments for chemistry and medicine. The University of Cambridge began to award PhD degrees in

9216-416: The date of their matriculation . Lucy Cavendish , which was previously a women-only mature college, began admitting both men and women in 2021. All other colleges admit both undergraduate and postgraduate students without any age restrictions. Colleges are not required to admit students in all subjects; some colleges choose not to offer subjects such as architecture, art history, or theology, but most offer

9344-577: The death of a local Oxford -area woman, were hanged by town authorities without first consulting ecclesiastical authorities, who traditionally would be inclined to pardon scholars in such cases. But during this time, Oxford's town authorities were in conflict with King John . Fearing more violence from Oxford townsfolk, University of Oxford scholars began leaving Oxford for more hospitable cities, including Paris, Reading , and Cambridge . Enough scholars ultimately took residence in Cambridge to form, along with

9472-492: The disease by locking their sites. Such conflicts between Cambridge's residents and university students have largely disappeared since the 16th century, and the university has grown as a source of enormous employment and expanded wealth in Cambridge and the region. The university also has proven a source of extraordinary growth in high tech and biotech start-ups and established companies and associated providers of services to these companies. The economic growth associated with

9600-456: The festival has existed since 1918 and the celebration itself originated even earlier at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall in 1880. The first television broadcast of the festival was in 1954. The university occupies a central location within the city of Cambridge . University of Cambridge students represent approximately 20 percent of the town's population, which was 145,674 as of 2021, resulting in

9728-464: The first draft typescript of his investigations. That same month, Church published his An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory , with similar conclusions to Turing's then-yet unpublished work. Finally, on 28 May of that year, he finished and delivered his 36-page paper for publication called " On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem ". It was published in

9856-419: The first graduate college of the university, matriculated both male and female students from its inception in 1964 and elected a mixed fellowship. Undergraduate colleges, starting with Churchill , Clare , and King 's colleges, began admitting women between 1972 and 1988. Among women's colleges at the university, Girton began admitting male students in 1979, and Lucy Cavendish began admitting men in 2021. But

9984-478: The first named. They emphasised how small their need was compared with the vast expenditure of men and money by the forces and compared with the level of assistance they could offer to the forces. As Andrew Hodges , biographer of Turing, later wrote, "This letter had an electric effect." Churchill wrote a memo to General Ismay , which read: "ACTION THIS DAY. Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done." On 18 November,

10112-500: The first third of the 20th century; the first Cambridge PhD in mathematics was awarded in 1924. The university contributed significantly to the Allies' forces in World War I with 13,878 members of the university serving and 2,470 being killed in action during the war. Teaching, and the fees it earned, nearly came to a halt during World War I, and severe financial difficulties followed. As

10240-449: The founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and that of Downing in 1800. The most recent college to be established is Robinson , which was built in the late 1970s. Most recently, in March 2010, Homerton College achieved full university college status, making it technically the university's newest full college. In medieval times, many colleges were founded so that their members could pray for

10368-514: The founding of the University of Cambridge in 1209, Cambridge and the area surrounding it already had developed a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation due largely to the intellectual reputation and academic contributions of monks from the nearby bishopric church in Ely . The founding of the University of Cambridge, however, was inspired largely by an incident at the University of Oxford during which three Oxford scholars, as an administration of justice in

10496-467: The highest international standard, thanks largely to G. H. Hardy and his collaborators, J. E. Littlewood and Srinivasa Ramanujan . W. V. D. Hodge and others helped establish Cambridge as a global leader in geometry in the 1930s. The Cambridge University Act 1856 formalised the university's organisational structure and introduced the study of many new subjects, including theology, history, and Modern languages . Resources necessary for new courses in

10624-460: The idea that such a machine could perform the tasks of any other computation machine (as indeed could Church's lambda calculus). According to the Church–Turing thesis , Turing machines and the lambda calculus are capable of computing anything that is computable. John von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to Turing's paper. To this day, Turing machines are

10752-414: The intellectual stimulation furnished by talented colleagues. We can admire the ideas they share with us and are usually able to understand their source; we may even often believe that we ourselves could have created such concepts and originated such thoughts. However, the experience of sharing the intellectual life of a genius is entirely different; one realizes that one is in the presence of an intelligence,

10880-446: The many scholars already there, the nucleus for the new university's formation. By 1225, a chancellor of the university was appointed, and writs issued by King Henry III in 1231 established that rents in Cambridge were to be set secundum consuetudinem universitatis , according to the custom of the university, and established a panel of two masters and two townsmen to determine these. A letter from Pope Gregory IX two years later to

11008-540: The mathematics Tripos exam are called wranglers , and the top student among them is known as the Senior Wrangler , a position that has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain." The Cambridge Mathematical Tripos is highly competitive and has helped produce some of the most famous names in British science, including James Clerk Maxwell , Lord Kelvin , and Lord Rayleigh . However, some famous students, such as G. H. Hardy , disliked

11136-432: The more likely settings so that they can be tried as quickly as possible". ... Richard said that GCHQ had now "squeezed the juice" out of the two papers and was "happy for them to be released into the public domain". Turing had a reputation for eccentricity at Bletchley Park. He was known to his colleagues as "Prof" and his treatise on Enigma was known as the "Prof's Book". According to historian Ronald Lewin , Jack Good ,

11264-447: The naming of Garret Hostel Lane and Garret Hostel Bridge , a street and bridge in Cambridge. The University of Cambridge's first college, Peterhouse , was founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham , the Bishop of Ely . Multiple additional colleges were founded during the 14th and 15th centuries, and colleges continued to be established during modern times, though there was a 204-year gap between

11392-466: The naval Enigma, "though I was not sure that it would work in practice, and was not, in fact, sure until some days had actually broken". For this, he invented a measure of weight of evidence that he called the ban . Banburismus could rule out certain sequences of the Enigma rotors, substantially reducing the time needed to test settings on the bombes. Later this sequential process of accumulating sufficient weight of evidence using decibans (one tenth of

11520-449: The other female-only colleges have remained female-only colleges as of 2023. As a result of St Hilda's College, Oxford , ending its ban on male students in 2008, Cambridge is now the only remaining university in the United Kingdom with female-only colleges; the two female-only colleges at the university are Newnham and Murray Edwards . As of the 2019–2020 academic year, the university's male to female enrollment, including post-graduates,

11648-556: The particularly difficult problem of cracking the German naval use of Enigma "because no one else was doing anything about it and I could have it to myself". In December 1939, Turing solved the essential part of the naval indicator system, which was more complex than the indicator systems used by the other services. That same night, he also conceived of the idea of Banburismus , a sequential statistical technique (what Abraham Wald later called sequential analysis ) to assist in breaking

11776-434: The present-day University of Cambridge were originally an incidental feature of the university; no college within the University of Cambridge is as old as the university itself. The colleges within the university were initially endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments, called hostels, which were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries, and they have left some traces, including

11904-420: The primary tools, and the major automated one, used to attack Enigma-enciphered messages. The bombe searched for possible correct settings used for an Enigma message (i.e., rotor order, rotor settings and plugboard settings) using a suitable crib : a fragment of probable plaintext . For each possible setting of the rotors (which had on the order of 10 states, or 10 states for the four-rotor U-boat variant),

12032-468: The same plaintext letter, which was impossible with the Enigma. The first bombe was installed on 18 March 1940. By late 1941, Turing and his fellow cryptanalysts Gordon Welchman , Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry were frustrated. Building on the work of the Poles , they had set up a good working system for decrypting Enigma signals, but their limited staff and bombes meant they could not translate all

12160-445: The sciences. Other colleges have more informal academic focus and even demonstrate ideological focus, such as King's , which is known for its left-wing political orientation, and Robinson and Churchill , both of which have a reputation for academic focus on sustainability and environmentalism. Three theological colleges at the university, Westcott House , Westminster College , and Ridley Hall Theological College , are members of

12288-407: The signals. In the summer, they had considerable success, and shipping losses had fallen to under 100,000 tons a month; however, they badly needed more resources to keep abreast of German adjustments. They had tried to get more people and fund more bombes through the proper channels, but had failed. On 28 October they wrote directly to Winston Churchill explaining their difficulties, with Turing as

12416-463: The spirit finds a new body sooner or later, perhaps immediately. After graduating from Sherborne, Turing applied for several Cambridge colleges scholarships, including Trinity and King's , eventually earning an £80 per annum scholarship (equivalent to about £4,300 as of 2023) to study at the latter. There, Turing studied the undergraduate course in Schedule B (that is, a three-year Parts I and II, of

12544-557: The standard Eurocard connector on the right-hand side of the board. This connector was not fitted/supplied as standard with the kit version. The System 1 front board was used as the control panel for the fictional computer Slave in the 1981 series of the BBC science-fiction series Blake's 7 . University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge , England. Founded in 1209,

12672-494: The student with the lowest passing grade deserving of the spoon, leading to discontinuation of the tradition. Each Christmas Eve, The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols , sung by the Choir of King's College , are broadcast globally on BBC World Service television and radio and syndicated to hundreds of additional radio stations in the U.S. and elsewhere. The radio broadcast has been a national Christmas Eve tradition since 1928, though

12800-485: The subject. He wrote two papers discussing mathematical approaches, titled The Applications of Probability to Cryptography and Paper on Statistics of Repetitions , which were of such value to GC&CS and its successor GCHQ that they were not released to the UK National Archives until April 2012, shortly before the centenary of his birth. A GCHQ mathematician, "who identified himself only as Richard," said at

12928-473: The time that the fact that the contents had been restricted under the Official Secrets Act for some 70 years demonstrated their importance, and their relevance to post-war cryptanalysis: [He] said the fact that the contents had been restricted "shows what a tremendous importance it has in the foundations of our subject". ... The papers detailed using "mathematical analysis to try and determine which are

13056-617: The top 20 business schools in the world by Financial Times . Many of the sites are quite close together, and the area around Cambridge is reasonably flat. Furthermore, students are not permitted to hold car park permits except under special circumstances. For these reasons, of the favourite modes of transport for students is the bicycle; an estimated one-fifth of journeys in the city are made by bike. The University of Cambridge and its constituent colleges include many notable locations, some of which are iconic or of historical, academic, religious, and cultural significance, including: Cambridge

13184-507: The university and colleges concluded, raising a total of £2.217 billion in commitments. The university maintains multiple scholarship programs. The Stormzy Scholarship for Black UK Students covers tuition costs for two students and maintenance grants for up to four years. In 2000, Bill Gates of Microsoft donated US$ 210 million through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to endow Gates Cambridge Scholarships for students from outside

13312-707: The university and the colleges, the Chancellor, the High Steward , the Deputy High Steward, and the Commissary. Public representatives of Regent House are the two Proctors , elected to serve for one year terms upon their nominations by the colleges. Although the University Council is the university's principal executive and policy-making body, the Council reports to, and is held accountable by, Regent House through

13440-563: The university is divided among them. The university has a department dedicated to providing continuing education , the Institute of Continuing Education , which is based primarily in Madingley Hall , a 16th-century manor house in Cambridgeshire . Its award-bearing programmes include both undergraduate certificates and part-time master's degrees. A school in the University of Cambridge is

13568-414: The university was recognised with a royal charter , granted by King Henry III . The University of Cambridge includes 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and over 150 academic departments, faculties, and other institutions organised into six schools . The largest department is Cambridge University Press & Assessment , which has £1 billion of annual revenue and reaches 100 million learners. All of

13696-489: The university's high tech and biotech growth has been labeled the Cambridge Phenomenon, and has included the addition of 1,500 new companies and as many as 40,000 new jobs added between 1960 and 2010, mostly at Silicon Fen , a business cluster launched by the university in the late 20th century. Partly because of the University of Cambridge's extensive history, which now exceeds 800 years, the university has developed

13824-531: The university's operational needs, which may include a number of departments and other institutions. A small number of bodies called syndicates hold responsibility for teaching and research, including for the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate , the University Press , and the University Library . The Chancellor of the university is limitless term position that is mainly ceremonial and

13952-419: The university's outgoing Vice-Chancellor, said the decision to suspend its collaboration with UAE also was a result of additional revelations about UAE's Pegasus software hacking. Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing ( / ˈ tj ʊər ɪ ŋ / ; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist , logician , cryptanalyst , philosopher and theoretical biologist . He

14080-480: The university, which arranges lectures and awards degrees, but undergraduates receive their overall academic supervision within the colleges through small group teaching sessions, which often include just one student; though in many cases students go to other colleges for supervision if the teaching fellows at their college do not specialise in a student's particular area of academic focus. Each college appoints its own teaching staff and fellows, both of whom are members of

14208-470: The war. However, official war historian Harry Hinsley estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over 14 million lives. At the end of the war, a memo was sent to all those who had worked at Bletchley Park, reminding them that the code of silence dictated by the Official Secrets Act did not end with the war but would continue indefinitely. Thus, even though Turing

14336-679: Was Ethel Sara Turing ( née  Stoney ), daughter of Edward Waller Stoney, chief engineer of the Madras Railways . The Stoneys were a Protestant Anglo-Irish gentry family from both County Tipperary and County Longford , while Ethel herself had spent much of her childhood in County Clare . Julius and Ethel married on 1 October 1907 at the Church of Ireland St. Bartholomew's Church on Clyde Road in Ballsbridge , Dublin . Julius's work with

14464-417: Was Walton Athletic Club's best runner, a fact discovered when he passed the group while running alone. When asked why he ran so hard in training he replied: I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard; it's the only way I can get some release. Due to the problems of counterfactual history , it is hard to estimate the precise effect Ultra intelligence had on

14592-769: Was abolished by the Representation of the People Act 1948 . The constituency was not a geographical area; rather, its electorate consisted of university graduates. Before 1918, the franchise was restricted to male graduates with a doctorate or MA degree. For the first several centuries of its existence, as was the case broadly in England and the world, the University of Cambridge was only open to male students. The first colleges established for women were Girton College , founded by Emily Davies in 1869, Newnham College , founded by Anne Clough and Henry Sidgwick in 1872, Hughes Hall , founded in 1885 by Elizabeth Phillips Hughes as

14720-643: Was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946 by King George VI for his wartime services, his work remained secret for many years. Within weeks of arriving at Bletchley Park, Turing had specified an electromechanical machine called the bombe , which could break Enigma more effectively than the Polish bomba kryptologiczna , from which its name was derived. The bombe, with an enhancement suggested by mathematician Gordon Welchman , became one of

14848-549: Was awarded in 1909 to Cuthbert Lempriere Holthouse, an oarsman of the Lady Margaret Boat Club at St John's College . It was over one metre in length and had an oar blade for a handle. It can now be seen outside the Senior Combination Room of St John's College. Since 1908, examination results have been published alphabetically within class rather than in strict order of merit, which made it difficult to ascertain

14976-464: Was covered by the Official Secrets Act . In 1952, Turing was prosecuted for homosexual acts . He accepted hormone treatment, a procedure commonly referred to as chemical castration , as an alternative to prison. Turing died on 7 June 1954, aged 41, from cyanide poisoning . An inquest determined his death as suicide , but the evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning. Following

15104-725: Was cut short by Morcom's death, in February 1930, from complications of bovine tuberculosis , contracted after drinking infected cow's milk some years previously. The event caused Turing great sorrow. He coped with his grief by working that much harder on the topics of science and mathematics that he had shared with Morcom. In a letter to Morcom's mother, Frances Isobel Morcom (née Swan), Turing wrote: I am sure I could not have found anywhere another companion so brilliant and yet so charming and unconceited. I regarded my interest in my work, and in such things as astronomy (to which he introduced me) as something to be shared with him and I think he felt

15232-422: Was elected a Fellow of King's College on the strength of his dissertation where he served as a lecturer . However, and, unknown to Turing, this version of the theorem he proved in his paper, had already been proven, in 1922, by Jarl Waldemar Lindeberg . Despite this, the committee found Turing's methods original and so regarded the work worthy of consideration for the fellowship. Abram Besicovitch 's report for

15360-500: Was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science , providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine , which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer . Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science. Born in London, Turing was raised in southern England . He graduated from King's College, Cambridge , and in 1938, earned

15488-425: Was nearly balanced with its total student population being 53% male and 47% female. In 2018 and later years, the university has come under some criticism and faced legal challenges over alleged sexual harassment at the university. In 2019, for example, former student Danielle Bradford, represented by sexual harassment lawyer Ann Olivarius , sued the university for its handling of her sexual misconduct complaint. "I

15616-512: Was not without controversies, however. For example, Cambridge researchers were accused in 2023 of helping to develop weapon systems for Iran. The University of Cambridge was one of only two universities to hold parliamentary seats in the Parliament of England and was later one of 19 represented in the Parliament of the United Kingdom . The constituency was created by a Royal charter of 1603 and returned two members of parliament until 1950 when it

15744-775: Was on leave from his position with the Indian Civil Service (ICS) of the British Raj government at Chatrapur , then in the Madras Presidency and presently in Odisha state, in India . Turing's father was the son of a clergyman, the Rev. John Robert Turing, from a Scottish family of merchants that had been based in the Netherlands and included a baronet . Turing's mother, Julius's wife,

15872-446: Was originally posed by German mathematician David Hilbert in 1928. Turing proved that his "universal computing machine" would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm . He went on to prove that there was no solution to the decision problem by first showing that the halting problem for Turing machines is undecidable : it is not possible to decide algorithmically whether

16000-548: Was required to sign the Official Secrets Act , in which he agreed not to disclose anything about his work at Bletchley, with severe legal penalties for violating the Act. Specifying the bombe was the first of five major cryptanalytical advances that Turing made during the war. The others were: deducing the indicator procedure used by the German navy; developing a statistical procedure dubbed Banburismus for making much more efficient use of

16128-440: Was so determined to attend that he rode his bicycle unaccompanied 60 miles (97 km) from Southampton to Sherborne, stopping overnight at an inn. Turing's natural inclination towards mathematics and science did not earn him respect from some of the teachers at Sherborne, whose definition of education placed more emphasis on the classics . His headmaster wrote to his parents: "I hope he will not fall between two stools. If he

16256-423: Was the first college to admit both men and women. In 1972, Churchill , Clare , and King's were the first previously all-male colleges to admit female undergraduates. In 1988, Magdalene became the last all-male college to accept women. Clare Hall and Darwin admit only postgraduates, and Hughes Hall , St Edmund's , and Wolfson admit only mature undergraduate and graduate students who are 21 years or older on

16384-693: Was told that I should think about it very carefully because making a complaint could affect my place in my department", Bradford alleged in 2019. In 2020, hundreds of current and former students accused the university in a letter, citing "a complete failure" to deal with sexual misconduct complaints. The relationship between the university and the city of Cambridge has sometimes been uneasy. The phrase town and gown continues to be employed to distinguish between Cambridge residents (town) and University of Cambridge students (gown), who historically wore academical dress . Ferocious rivalry between Cambridge's residents and university students have periodically erupted over

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