Synthesis And Rhetorical Analysis: The Great Alan Turing

Persuasive Synthesis and Rhetorical Analysis Paper

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” This is a quote from the great Alan Turing. Turing became one of the most influential leaders in advancement for computer science, cryptology, and computer intelligence while also living a courageous life that fought through discrimination and inequality.

Mathison Turing was a mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, and theoretical biologist. He was born in London, England to an upper middle class family. He attended the well-known Sherbone School where he displayed high intelligence and a passion for math and science. After Sherbone, he studied at Kings College from 1931 to 1934.

He became a fellow here as well after a visiting professor named John Von Neumann wrote a letter to the university that outlined his recommendation for Turing to be accepted into the Proctor Visiting Fellowship (Neumann, John Von). He wrote the letter after he saw the brightness and intelligence in Turing’s work. One year later, Turing is invited to join the Government Codes and Ciphers school at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England. He develops his version of the Bombe machine and begins decrypting messages sent by the Germans using their enigma machine. On the page “Breaking Enigma” in the Wartime History tab of Bletchley Park’s website (Bletchley Park), “The first operational break into Enigma came around the 23 January 1940, when the team working under Dilly Knox, with the mathematicians John Jeffreys, Peter Twinn and Alan Turing, unraveled the German Army administrative key that became known at Bletchley Park as ‘The Green’.” This was the first step towards breaking the entire German Naval Enigma System, which was accomplished in 1942. The breaking of the Naval Enigma is estimated to have shortened the Battle of the Atlantic by at