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.
December 19, 2015 at 10:03 am |
Interesting – has the Guardian entered the space race?
December 21, 2015 at 12:01 pm |
Ah! Typo. Orbit should read obit.
April 18, 2016 at 10:34 pm |
I remember very few lectures at Leeds as well…