What was common between, George Eastman, Alan Turing and Ludwig Boltzman. Apart from being a true genius and scientist, they all had one thing in common. they all committed suicide. Today their absence is not only missed but the way they died, brings us to a more compelling question, Is the society not able to value a genius or they are far ahead of their own times.
Today the world is about to reach at the point of singularity, the softwares are taking over in most of the aspects. And Alan Michael Turing can be said to the father of the modern computer science. The question 'whether a problem can be solved by the computer in a realistic time frame' was answered by him. Imagine any finite problem(whose solution exists) needs to be solved in a finite time, the solvability of this problem by any machine is determined by Turing's construct a.k.a. the Turing Machine. Any problem that a can be solved by a Turing machine in some time is solvable by any modern day computer, otherwise it will take an undeterministic time to solve that. With this landmark theorem (which still defines the limit of computer science), Turing was also hailed as the savior of UK in the second world war for his code breaking capabilities. But Turing's later life was not that happy. In his personal life (he was a gay), was not accepted to the society. The government asked him to take special hormones, which depressed him and finally in 1952 he committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide. Allegedly, apple computer's loge is a tribute to Alan Turing (which the company refutes).
Till 15 years ago, photographic film rolls was a mandatory thing for a tourist to carry. The inventor of that product was none other than George Eastman (erstwhile founder of the company Kodak). Eastman was self educated, made the photographic film, perfected it for Kodak cameras. A philanthropist by nature, he donated in his lifetime almost 100 million dollars towards universities under the name of "Mr. Smith". In his later years, he was living with pain because of his health issues. On march 1932, he shot himself with a gunshot in his chest, leaving a note "My work is done. Why wait?"
Today the world is about to reach at the point of singularity, the softwares are taking over in most of the aspects. And Alan Michael Turing can be said to the father of the modern computer science. The question 'whether a problem can be solved by the computer in a realistic time frame' was answered by him. Imagine any finite problem(whose solution exists) needs to be solved in a finite time, the solvability of this problem by any machine is determined by Turing's construct a.k.a. the Turing Machine. Any problem that a can be solved by a Turing machine in some time is solvable by any modern day computer, otherwise it will take an undeterministic time to solve that. With this landmark theorem (which still defines the limit of computer science), Turing was also hailed as the savior of UK in the second world war for his code breaking capabilities. But Turing's later life was not that happy. In his personal life (he was a gay), was not accepted to the society. The government asked him to take special hormones, which depressed him and finally in 1952 he committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide. Allegedly, apple computer's loge is a tribute to Alan Turing (which the company refutes).
No comments:
Post a Comment