Jim Al-Khalili hosts an evening exploring the life, work and legacy of one of the greatest scientific minds

Alan Turing (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954)  is now celebrated for his crucial contribution to the Allied victory in WW2 and for being the genius mathematician who set the foundations of modern computing. However during his lifetime he was a relatively obscure figure. A victim of the prevalent attitudes toward homosexuality, he was chemically castrated before dying at the age of 41. Jim Al-Khalili is joined by scientists and experts in an evening dedicated to Turing.

Jim Al-Khalili OBE is a British scientist, author and broadcaster. He is a professor of Physics, University of Surrey where he also holds a chair in the Public Engagement in Science. He has written many popular science books, between them translated into 26 languages and is a regular presenter of TV science documentaries. He is probably best known as presenter of the weekly BBC Radio 4 programme The Life Scientific.

Professor Andrew Hodges is Tutor in Mathematics, Wadham College, Oxford University. His book, Alan Turing: The Enigma (1983), since translated into several languages, created a new kind of biography, with mathematics, science, computing, war history, philosophy and gay liberation woven into a single personal narrative. He is an active contributor to the mathematics of fundamental physics.

Sir John Dermot Turing is the nephew of Alan Turing. His biography of his uncle, Prof: Alan Turing Decoded, was published in 2015. He is a Trustee of the Turing Trust and takes an active role in several Bletchley Park Trust Board committees.

Dr Kirstie Whitaker is a Research Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute and senior research associate in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. She uses magnetic resonance imaging to study child and adolescent brain development. She is a Fulbright scholarship alumna, 2016/17 Mozilla Fellow for Science and founder of the STEMM Role Models project.

Enjoy food and drink purchased from the Knowledge Centre Bar from 18.00 and after the event until the Bar closes at 22.00.

In collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute

The Alan Turing Institute is the UK’s national centre for data science, headquartered at the British Library. The Institute is named in honour of Alan Turing, whose pioneering work in theoretical and applied mathematics, engineering and computing are considered to be the key disciplines comprising the emerging field of data science. It was founded in 2015 as a joint venture by the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford, University College London, Warwick and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Research excellence is the foundation of the Institute: the sharpest minds from the data science community investigating the hardest questions. Turing researchers collaborate across disciplines to generate impact, both through theoretical development and application to real-world problems.

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