Turing's Toy - The Story of a Mathematical Idea That Changed the World

This talk explains Turing’s 1936 machine, its universal form, and its implications for computation. It places the idea in the context of the Hilbert program, Gödel’s work, and Church’s lambda calculus.

Syllabus

Intro
The "Hilbert Program"
Principia Mathematica
The Decision Problem Remains...
Kurt Gödel
Alan Turing
The Turing Machine is Born
The First Machine
Producing a Number
Computing 0.001011011101111...
The Standardized Table
Table in Standard Format
Serializing a Table
The Universal Machine
Description Numbers
Philosophy and the Turing Machine
Circular and Circle-Free Machines
Building the Machine "H"
Pseudo Code for "H"
Turing's Conclusion
Alonzo Church and Lambda Calculus
Turing After the Paper
David Hilbert and the Nazis
Hilbert's Tombstone in Göttingen