Computable Numbers, 80 Years on..
There’s been rather a lot of sad news conveyed via this blog recently, so I thought that today I’d mark a happier event. Eighty years ago today (i.e. on 28th May 1936), a paper by Alan Turing arrived at the London Mathematical Society. Entitled “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Enstscheidungsproblem“, this was not only enormously influential but also a truly beautiful piece of work. Turing was only 23 when he wrote it. It was delivered to the London Mathematical Society about 6 months after it was submitted, i.e. in November 1936..
Here’s the first page:
The full reference is
Proc. London Math. Soc. (1937) s2-42 (1): 230-265. doi: 10.1112/plms/s2-42.1.230
You can find the full paper here. I heartily recommend reading it, it’s wonderful.
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In the Dark 
May 28, 2016 at 8:59 pm
Is there an open access version? This link gives me a paywall. Copyright must have expired though.
May 28, 2016 at 9:02 pm
Try this https://t.co/WPcU5C7sWE
May 29, 2016 at 7:48 am
Are numbers which are representable only as an infinite series computable? I don’t quite get the category. Or the point, in fact, for the pure maths of computation theory looks more contrived than elegant to me, and as for application I don’t know if it has been applied to help anybody design a better computer. I am willing to believe that the problem is with me (and my scepticism is not aimed against Turing, who deserved high national honour), but I’d love an explanation from somebody having a theoretical-physics background.