In 1936, at the age of 23, Alan Turing published the landmark paper ‘On Computable Number, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem’. This paper was about a mathematical proof on an important mathematical philosophical problem, the decision problem of the Formalism proposed by the great German mathematician, David Hilbert in early 20th century. The proof may be of significant importance to the academic world but it was the first part of his paper: the invention of a mathematical tool for the proof, the Turing Machine that lays the theoretical foundation of modern digital computer. It was this by-product of the paper that had the profound effect of influencing the life of nearly everyone in this digital age. In a paper published in 1950, Alan Turing asked a question that has reverberated in philosophy, cognitive science and computer science ever since: can machine think? The famous Turing Test was proposed and this founded the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research. Despite the many significant contributions, the story of Alan Turing was not told a lot until recent years. This is partly because his war time effort was a highly classified national secret until the 70s and partly because the British government dishonorable treatment of his homosexual attitude that lead to his committed suicide with cyanide poisoning on 7 June 1954, at the young age of 41. It was only in recent years that his name was getting more popular through a small number of people actively promoting his story and re-establishing his honor to the right proportion. The talk is based on the book “Alan Turing: Life and Legacy of a Great Thinker” edited by Christof Teuscher. It is a collection of articles on the various great contributions of Alan Turing and how his ideas spawned the different academic disciplines that are still of great importance today. The speaker will walk through Turing’s amazing and ingenious ideas with the audience. The talk is dedicated to Alan Turing that the world will celebrate his 100th birthday on 23rd June 2012. 日期：9 / 11 / 2012 (Fri) 時間：7 - 9 pm 地點：香港中文大學康本國際學術園 6 號演講廳