I was saddened to hear of the death of Barry Cooper, a Leeds University mathematician, who specialised in computability, the fiendish maths of proving whether something is calculable. As the Guardian obit makes clear he arguably did more than anyone else to make Alan Turing and his work known to the wider public, and was instrumental in organizing the great computer scientist’s centenary year in 2012. It seems doubtful that Turing would have won a pardon or that films would have been made about his time at Bletchley without Cooper’s initial efforts. He taught at Leeds whilst I was an undergraduate, although I don’t recall attending one of his lectures. You can read more about Cooper’s ideas, research and his championing of Turing at his webpage.
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Barry Cooper and Turing
December 18, 2015I was saddened to hear of the death of Barry Cooper, a Leeds University mathematician, who specialised in computability, the fiendish maths of proving whether something is calculable. As the Guardian obit makes clear he arguably did more than anyone else to make Alan Turing and his work known to the wider public, and was instrumental in organizing the great computer scientist’s centenary year in 2012. It seems doubtful that Turing would have won a pardon or that films would have been made about his time at Bletchley without Cooper’s initial efforts. He taught at Leeds whilst I was an undergraduate, although I don’t recall attending one of his lectures. You can read more about Cooper’s ideas, research and his championing of Turing at his webpage.
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