[Caml-list] Andrew Hodges to give this year's LMS/BCS-FACS Seminar: "Alan Turing, The Absent Father of Computing" -- 12 November 2026 (London and online)

[Andrei Popescu <andrei.h.popescu@gmail.com>]

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to announce that Andrew Hodges will give this year's
LMS/BCS-FACS Seminar on Thursday, 12 November 2026, with a talk titled
"Alan Turing, The Absent Father of Computing". The seminar also marks
an anniversary: Turing's "On Computable Numbers" paper was read to the
London Mathematical Society on 12 November 1936, ninety years to the
day.

The seminar will be held in a hybrid format, with the opportunity to
attend in person at De Morgan House in London or remotely via Zoom.

Date: Thursday, 12 November 2026
Time: 16:30-17:30 GMT (welcome and refreshments from 16:00; reception
from 17:30)
Venue: De Morgan House, London, and online via Zoom
Registration: Attendance is free, but advance registration is
required. Please register for either in-person or online attendance
via the event page:

https://www.lms.ac.uk/events/lms-bcs-facs-seminar-2026

Speaker: Andrew Hodges (University of Oxford)

Title: Alan Turing, The Absent Father of Computing

Abstract:

Alan Turing (1912-1954) has often been dubbed the 'Father' of
computing, this vague word conveying the complex connection between On
Computable Numbers in 1936, the digital computing plans of 1945, the
first working electronic computers in 1948-51, and computer science
thereafter. I will address this complexity, starting with an update on
the well-known question of whether and how von Neumann’s EDVAC report
of 1945 was related to Turing’s work. But my emphasis will be on what
happened after 1945, regarding it as a puzzle that Turing drew so
little attention to his own 1936 foundations, despite their relevance
to his famous Intelligent Machinery predictions. His extraordinary
reticence affected the emergent science and technology of computing,
as I will illustrate with some little-known documents. My conclusion
is summarised in the title: it is fair to consider him a ‘father’, but
he avoided taking either praise or responsibility for his offspring.

About the speaker:

Andrew Hodges was for many years a tutor and lecturer in mathematics
at Oxford University. His research was mainly as a colleague of Roger
Penrose in making a new approach to mathematical physics, and in this
field he was also a visitor to the Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton, working with Nima Arkani-Hamed. He is now an Emeritus
Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He is best known as the author of
Alan Turing: the Enigma, published in 1983. In the forty years since
then he has contributed further to the world of Turing studies, with a
website at turing.org.uk. In an unusual career he has also seen
various adaptations of this work in the arts and media, most recently
in collaborating with the Pet Shop Boys in A man from the future, a
musical piece released in October 2026.

We hope you will be able to join us, either in London or online.
Please feel free to circulate this announcement to colleagues,
students, and anyone else who may be interested.

Best wishes,
Andrei
(on behalf of the LMS/BCS-FACS Seminar organisers)