The Books on Young Alan Turing’s Reading List: From Lewis Carroll to Modern Chromatics

in History, Math, Physics | June 8th, 2016

turing book list

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We now regard Alan Tur­ing, the trou­bled and ulti­mate­ly per­se­cut­ed crypt­an­a­lyst (and, intel­lec­tu­al­ly, much more besides)—who cracked the code of the Ger­man Enig­ma machine in World War II—as one of the great minds of his­to­ry. His life and work have drawn a good deal of seri­ous exam­i­na­tion since his ear­ly death in 1954, and recent­ly his lega­cy has even giv­en rise to pop­u­lar por­tray­als such as that by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch in the film The Imi­ta­tion Game. So what, more and more of us have start­ed to won­der, forms a mind like Tur­ing’s in the first place?

A few years ago, math­e­mat­ics writer Alex Bel­los received, from “an old friend who teach­es at Sher­borne, the school Tur­ing attend­ed between 1928 and 1930,” some “new infor­ma­tion about the com­put­er pio­neer and codebreaker’s school years” in the form of “the list of books Tur­ing took out from the school library while he was a pupil.” Bel­los lists them as fol­lows:

“As you can see, and as you might expect,” writes Bel­los, “heavy on the sci­ences. The AJ Evans, a mem­oir about the author’s escape from impris­on­ment in the First World War, is the only non-sci­en­tif­ic book.” He also notes that “the physics books he took out all look very seri­ous, but the maths ones are light­heart­ed: the Lewis Car­roll and the Rouse Ball, which for decades was the clas­sic text in recre­ation­al maths prob­lems.” Sher­borne archivist Rachel Has­sall, who pro­vid­ed Bel­los with the list, also told him that “the book cho­sen by Tur­ing for his school prize was a copy of the Rouse Ball. Even teenage genius­es like to have fun.”

If you, too, would like to do a bit of the read­ing of a genius — or, depend­ing on how quan­ti­ta­tive­ly your own mind works, just have some fun — you can down­load for free most of these books the young Tur­ing checked out of the school library. Pro­gram­mer and writer John Gra­ham-Cum­ming orig­i­nal­ly found and orga­nized all the links to the texts on his blog; you can fol­low them there or from the list in this post. And if you know any young­sters in whom you see the poten­tial to achieve his­to­ry’s next Tur­ing-lev­el accom­plish­ment, send a few e‑books their way. Why read Har­ry Pot­ter, after all, when you can read A Selec­tion of Pho­tographs of Stars, Star-Clus­ters & Neb­u­lae, togeth­er with infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the instru­ments & the meth­ods employed in the pur­suit of celes­tial pho­tog­ra­phy?

via Alex Bel­los

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Alan Tur­ing, Bril­liant Math­e­mati­cian and Code Break­er, Will Be Final­ly Par­doned by British Gov­ern­ment

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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170 Renowned Academics Talk About Why They Disbelieve, or Believe, in God

in Philosophy, Physics, Religion, Science | May 11th, 2016

Whether we choose to affil­i­ate with any sort of athe­ist move­ment or not, many peo­ple raised in the­is­tic reli­gions came over time to see God as a lit­er­ary char­ac­ter in ancient mytholo­gies and his­tor­i­cal fic­tions, as a place­hold­er for human igno­rance, or as a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of humanity’s great­est fears and desires. The notion that such a per­son­al super-being actu­al­ly exists has become for many of us, in William James’ terms, a “dead hypoth­e­sis.” As physi­cist Lawrence Krauss puts it in the video above, “there’s absolute­ly no evi­dence that we need the super­nat­ur­al hand of God” to explain the uni­verse. Reli­gions give us fan­ci­ful sto­ries, illus­trate eth­i­cal (and uneth­i­cal) prin­ci­ples, and enforce trib­al loy­al­ties, but they do not describe real­i­ty as it is.

We all come to hold our beliefs, or lack there­of, about reli­gious claims for an irre­ducibly com­plex vari­ety of rea­sons that are intel­lec­tu­al as well as moral, polit­i­cal, and emo­tion­al. Can we demon­strate, how­ev­er, that “the more sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate, intel­lec­tu­al­ly hon­est and objec­tive­ly scep­ti­cal a per­son is, the more like­ly they are to dis­be­lieve in any­thing super­nat­ur­al, includ­ing god”? Such is the the­sis of Dr. Jonathan Pararajasignham’s doc­u­men­tary 50 Renowned Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God, which con­sists of edit­ed clips from inter­views with “elite aca­d­e­mics and pro­fes­sors at top insti­tu­tions, many of whom are also Nobel Lau­re­ates.” The claim appears on the screen in each of the three videos above and below, fram­ing the inter­view clips as mount­ing evi­dence for the con­vinc­ing case that dis­be­lief is strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with, if not nec­es­sar­i­ly caused by, sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy, intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty, and skep­ti­cism.

Since his first video, Parara­jas­ing­ham has expand­ed his series to include 100 more “Renowned Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God.” (See Parts Two and Three of the series above.) On the videos’ Youtube pages, he antic­i­pates a ready objec­tion, writ­ing, “I do not claim that this video demon­strates there is no God. It is not an argu­ment against God in itself, so there is no argu­ment from pop­u­lar­i­ty and author­i­ty.” If you’ve already arrived at the con­clu­sion, you’ll find it con­firmed many times over by a cast that includes physi­cists like Krauss, Richard Feyn­man, and Steven Wein­berg, philoso­phers like A.C. Gray­ing, Bertrand Rus­sell, and John Sear­le, and far too many more illus­tri­ous thinkers to name. (See a com­plete list on the Youtube pages of each video.) In addi­tion to well-known athe­ist writ­ers like Daniel Den­nett, the series also fea­tures aca­d­e­mics like anthro­pol­o­gist Pas­cal Boy­er, whose book Reli­gion Explained makes a nov­el and very per­sua­sive nat­u­ral­is­tic argu­ment for why humans have believed in the super­nat­ur­al for thou­sands of years.

Believ­ers may counter with their own list of smart peo­ple who do believe in God, and who also work in the hard sci­ences and aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy, includ­ing renowned fig­ures like Human Genome Project direc­tor Fran­cis Collins and physi­cist Free­man Dyson. Whether or not they’d wish to claim failed pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ben Car­son or reli­gious apol­o­gists Dinesh D’Souza and Ravi Zacharias as exam­ples of “intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty and sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy” I couldn’t say, but all of those peo­ple and more are includ­ed in the video above, 20 Chris­t­ian Aca­d­e­mics Speak­ing About God, which Parara­jas­ing­ham pro­duced as a coun­ter­point to his 50 Aca­d­e­mics series. Find the com­plete list of names for this video, along with links to com­plete inter­views, on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es

Robert Sapol­sky Explains the Bio­log­i­cal Basis of Reli­gios­i­ty, and What It Shares in Com­mon with OCD, Schiz­o­phre­nia & Epilep­sy

Richard Feyn­man on Reli­gion, Sci­ence, the Search for Truth & Our Will­ing­ness to Live with Doubt

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why He’s Uncom­fort­able Being Labeled an ‘Athe­ist’

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Brian Greene Breaks Down Einstein’s Theory of Gravitational Waves for Stephen Colbert

in Physics | February 29th, 2016

Ear­li­er this month, we gave you this news bul­letin: “sci­en­tists announced that they had record­ed the sound of two black holes col­lid­ing a bil­lion light years away, pro­vid­ing the first real proof that grav­i­ta­tion­al waves actu­al­ly exist–something Albert Ein­stein pre­dict­ed 100 years ago in his famous paper on gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty.” This news actu­al­ly gets much more inter­est­ing if you wrap your minds around the whole con­cept of Grav­i­ta­tion­al Waves, which is exact­ly what physi­cist Bri­an Greene–fea­tured on this site many times before–set out to do when he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert last week. Watch his visu­al-rich expla­na­tion above, and you’ll start get­ting a hang of the con­cepts. Below, for extra cred­it, you can watch anoth­er pop­u­lar­iz­er of sci­ence, Neil deGrasse Tyson, tak­ing his own stab at explain­ing this phe­nom­e­non.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Grav­i­ta­tion­al Waves Sound Like: New Audio of Black Holes Col­lid­ing Con­firms Pre­dic­tions Ein­stein Made 100 Years Ago

Free Online Physics Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1150 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Grav­i­ty Visu­al­ized by High School Teacher in an Amaz­ing­ly Ele­gant & Sim­ple Way

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Stephen Hawking’s Uplifting Message: You Can Get Yourself Out of Any Hole, No Matter What Their Size

in Animation, Physics | February 22nd, 2016

Sev­er­al weeks back, you might recall, Stephen Hawk­ing deliv­ered two Rei­th lec­tures over the radio air­waves of the BBC –one called “Do Black Holes Have No Hair?,” the oth­er “Black Holes Ain’t as Black as They Are Paint­ed.” Both were fea­tured here, accom­pa­nied by some live­ly chalk­board ani­ma­tions.

Above you can watch an out­take from the sec­ond lec­ture, this time ani­mat­ed in a dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic. It’s trip­py, hyp­not­ic, and unless you’re ground­ed in the mate­r­i­al, the talk will leave you a lit­tle baffled–at least until the end, when Hawk­ing leaves us with a life-affirm­ing mes­sage any­one can relate to. “If you feel like you’re in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out.” At once, he’s talk­ing lit­er­al­ly about black holes that are no longer thought to con­sume every­thing they encounter, and the metaphor­i­cal ones we all run into, some­where along the way, in life.

On that uplift­ing note, anoth­er week begins…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Stephen Hawking’s Lec­tures on Black Holes Now Ful­ly Ani­mat­ed with Chalk­board Illus­tra­tions

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

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The Remarkable Physics of Ants: Watch Them Turn into Fluids and Solids at Will

in Physics, Video - Science | February 16th, 2016

Ants nev­er cease to amaze us. Over the years here, we’ve watched them cre­ate a liv­ing life raft in 100 sec­onds flat, build sur­pris­ing­ly com­plex ant colonies, and demon­strate an uncan­ny kind of cen­tral­ized intel­li­gence. Now let’s add to the list the ways in which they can col­lec­tive­ly act like a flu­id or a sol­id, depend­ing on the demands of a sit­u­a­tion.

These obser­va­tions were made by sci­en­tists at the Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, who record­ed the video above and pre­sent­ed it at a 2013 meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety. Watch­ing the video, you can see ants wield­ing pow­ers that we’ve only oth­er­wise seen demon­strat­ed in sec­ond tier super­heroes (no offense to the Won­der Twins intend­ed). And yet, accord­ing to The New York Times, these remark­able pow­ers may have some prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions, lead­ing sci­en­tists to devel­op self-assem­bling robots and self-heal­ing mate­ri­als. By watch­ing ants build and repair bridges for them­selves, we can imag­ine cre­at­ing bridges that auto­mat­i­cal­ly repair their own cracks here in the mate­r­i­al world.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Watch The Amaz­ing 1912 Ani­ma­tion of Stop-Motion Pio­neer Ladis­las Stare­vich, Star­ring Dead Bugs

Can Ants Count? Do They Have Built-In Pedome­ters? Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

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What Gravitational Waves Sound Like: New Audio of Black Holes Colliding Confirms Predictions Einstein Made 100 Years Ago

in Physics | February 12th, 2016

On Thurs­day, sci­en­tists announced that they had record­ed the sound of two black holes col­lid­ing a bil­lion light years away, pro­vid­ing the first real proof that grav­i­ta­tion­al waves actu­al­ly exist–something Albert Ein­stein pre­dict­ed 100 years ago in his famous paper on gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty. If you would like an intro­duc­tion to the whole con­cept of grav­i­ta­tion­al waves, I’d rec­om­mend watch­ing the ani­ma­tion below, cre­at­ed by PhD Comics–the same folks who cre­at­ed a handy ani­ma­tion explain­ing the Hig­gs Boson when it was con­firmed back in 2012.

But, for the moment, I’d real­ly like you to lis­ten to the “Grav­i­ta­tion­al Wave Chirp,” the audio record­ing unveiled by sci­en­tists this week. (Hear it up top.) As The New York Times describes it, the chirp ris­es to “the note of mid­dle C before abrupt­ly stop­ping,” And it’s like­ly to “take its place among the great sound bites of sci­ence,” rank­ing up there with Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell’s “Mr. Wat­son — come here” and Sputnik’s first beeps from orbit.” Decades from now, you can tell your grand­kids you heard it here first.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

Free Online Physics Cours­es, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Grav­i­ty Visu­al­ized by High School Teacher in an Amaz­ing­ly Ele­gant & Sim­ple Way

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Stephen Hawking’s Lectures on Black Holes Now Fully Animated with Chalkboard Illustrations

in Physics | February 5th, 2016

A quick note: This week, the BBC post­ed the sec­ond of Stephen Hawk­ing’s Rei­th Lec­tures focus­ing on Black Holes. And, once again, they’ve ani­mat­ed the pre­sen­ta­tion with some fun chalk­board illus­tra­tions. You can watch Part 1, “Do Black Holes Have No Hair?” here. And now Part 2, “Black Holes Ain’t as Black as They Are Paint­ed,” above. Hawk­ing is get­ting a lit­tle play­ful with his gram­mar, isn’t he? Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

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Stephen Hawking & Actor Paul Rudd Play an Epic Game of Quantum Chess, Narrated by Keanu Reeves

in Games, Physics | January 28th, 2016

The Insti­tute for Quan­tum Infor­ma­tion and Mat­ter (IQIM) at Cal­tech post­ed on its YouTube chan­nel today a fun lit­tle video called “Any­one Can Quantum”–the “Any­one” prob­a­bly refer­ring to actor Paul Rudd, who takes on Stephen Hawk­ing in a game of Quan­tum Chess, nar­rat­ed by Keanu Reeves. Quan­tum Chess, a made-up thing, a gim­mick, you say? Not so appar­ent­ly. It’s a thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Ani­ma­tion Takes You Inside the Mind of Stephen Hawk­ing

Down­load the Soft­ware That Pro­vides Stephen Hawking’s Voice

Stephen Hawking’s Big Ideas Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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