In association with the British Computer Society Formal Aspects of Computing Science (BCS-FACS), the LMS hosts a regular online seminar on aspects of the computer science–mathematics interface. These events are free to anyone who wishes to attend and have attracted high-quality speakers
Speakers
Andrew Hodges (University of Oxford)
Chair/facilitator: Andrei Popescu (University of Sheffield)
Agenda
4:00pm - Welcome and refreshments
4:30pm - Andrew Hodges (University of Oxford)
Alan Turing, The Absent Father of Computing
Alan Turing (1912-1954) has often been dubbed the ‘Father’ of computing, this vague word conveying the complex connection between On Computable Numbers in 1936, the digital computing plans of 1945, the first working electronic computers in 1948-51, and computer science thereafter. I will address this complexity, starting with an update on the well-known question of whether and how von Neumann’s EDVAC report of 1945 was related to Turing’s work. But my emphasis will be on what happened after 1945, regarding it as a puzzle that Turing drew so little attention to his own 1936 foundations, despite their relevance to his famous Intelligent Machinery predictions. His extraordinary reticence affected the emergent science and technology of computing, as I will illustrate with some little-known documents. My conclusion is summarised in the title: it is fair to consider him a ‘father’, but he avoided taking either praise or responsibility for his offspring
5:30pm - Reception
6:30pm - End
About the speakers
Andrew Hodges was for many years a tutor and lecturer in mathematics at Oxford University. His research was mainly as a colleague of Roger Penrose in making a new approach to mathematical physics, and in this field he was also a visitor to the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, working with Nima Arkani-Hamed. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He is best known as the author of Alan Turing: the Enigma, published in 1983. In the forty years since then he has contributed further to the world of Turing studies, with a website at turing.org.uk. In an unusual career he has also seen various adaptations of this work in the arts and media, most recently in collaborating with the Pet Shop Boys in A man from the future, a musical piece released in October 2026.
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This event is supported by: FACS (Formal Aspects of Computing Science) group
