Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant

A quote attributed to Isaac Newton says “If I have seen a little further it’s because I stand on the shoulders of giants”. This was indeed stated by Newton, but the general metaphor of a dwarf standing on a giant goes back many, many years earlier. I would recommend the wonderful 1965 book by Robert K. Merton, referred to fondly as OTSOG (on the shoulders of giants) [1] . Alan M. Turing (1912-1954) can almost be said to be the Mozart of computer science. He died at a young age, under well-known tragic circumstances, leaving an incredibly brilliant, diverse, and versatile legacy. And we are left with the tantalizing question of what would he have achieved had he lived another 30 or 40 years. Turing conceived of the simplest yet most powerful models of computation, but also contributed the design of some of the most complex computers of his time. He proved that there are many things that computers cannot do (already in 1936!), but also taught us that there some amazing things that they can do. He carried out pioneering work on the idea of mathematical and computational modeling of biology, but also dealt with the question whether computers can be of human-like intelligence. I feel that Alan Turing will become recognized as one of the most important and influential scientists of all time, possibly alongside other giants like Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Many computers scientists feel that large parts of their research are rooted in Turing’s work and I am one of them. This talk will discuss briefly three of Turing’s main lines of work, and the crucial way in which they impacted one person’s research — my own. I will not be discussing a central part of my work, that related to software and systems engineering and executable visual languages, but the talk will cover several of the other topics I have worked in over the years.