GARDEN OF PHYSICS Episode 29
The Lord of Machines
Guest: dr Dušan Vudragović
Not just did both hypothetical and real Turing’s machines herald the renaissance of computation, but they also had a crucial role in the victory against Geman forces in the Second World War’, says Dr Dušan Vudragović of the Institute of Physics, Belgrade in the 29th episode of the popular science video series ‘The Garden of Physics’.
During his studies, Alan Turing, nowadays known as the founder of contemporary computation, was focused on the decision problem defined by David Hilbert, i.e. on solving the problem of whether we can automatically decide if a certain mathematical problem is correct. ‘Is there a problem that the most modern computer cannot solve? Yes, there is, and Turing mathematically proved it’, states Dr Vudragović, explicating that the famous Turing machine was created to this end.
Another Turing’s machine had an even more practical purpose and historians nowadays think that owing to it and the work of British teams for deciphering messages, the Second World War was shortened. ‘Turing is most famous for decoding Enigma, a machine that Germans used for encoding messages’, says Dr Vudragović in the episode detailing how this machine functioned and which skills were necessary to decode messages.
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Authors: Marija Đurić and Slobodan Bubnjević
Scenario: ’Science Through Stories’
Camera/drone: Zoran Veljanoski, Bojan Živojinović (Twotech Solutions)
Production associate: Jovana Nikolić
Directing and editing: Bojan Živojinović
Produced by: Insitute of Physics, Belgrade, 2021