mathematics. 3 Similarly, around 1955,
Gorn became accustomed to viewing a
universal Turing machine as a conceptual abstraction of the modern computer (see, for example, Gorn8). By the
end of the 1950s, Carr and Gorn explicitly used Turing’s universal machine to
express the fundamental interchangeability of hardware and language implementations. Turing’s 1936 theory
thus helped influence ACM members
to articulate a theoretical framework
that could accommodate for what programmers had been accomplishing
independently of metamathematics. 6
In 1965, ACM Vice President Anthony
Oettinger (who had known Turing personally), and the rest of ACM’s Program Committee proposed that an annual “National
Lecture be called the Allen [sic] M. Turing
Lecture.” 1 Lewis Clapp, the chairman of
the ACM Awards Committee, collected
information on the award procedures
“in other professional societies.” In 1966
he wrote: [a]n awards program […] would
be a fitting activity for the Association as it
enhances its own image as a professional
society. […] [I]t would serve to accentuate
new software techniques and theoretical
contributions. […] The award itself might be
named after one of the early great luminaries
in the field (for example, “The Von Neuman
[sic] Award” or “The Turing Award”, etc.) 2
ACM’s first Turing Awardee in 1966
was Perlis, a well-established computer
scientist, former president of the ACM,
and close colleague of Carr and Gorn.
Decorating Perlis is in hindsight thus
rather unsurprising. Turing, by con-
trast, was not well known in computing
at large, even though his 1936 universal
machine had become a central concept
for those few who wanted to give com-
puter programming a theoretical im-
petus and also a professional status.a
The first wave of recognition that
Turing received posthumously with
the Turing award in 1966 is but a ripple
when compared to the second wave.
a We speculate that Turing was preferred over
von Neumann, because the latter was associated with hardware engineering rather than
with theoretical foundations of programming.
Moreover, it might be that for the more liberally minded Carr, Gorn, and Perlis, von Neumann was too strongly associated with conservative Cold War politics. There were other
potential candidates as well, such as Emil
Post. Historians are now starting to investigate
these matters (see, for example, Daylight7).
Recently, Communications published
two columns in which Turing’s legacy
is put into a more historical context. 7, 9
We continue this line of research by focusing on how Turing functioned as a
hero within the formation of computer
science. We will do so here by comparing the consecration of Turing with
that of Gauss in mathematics.
Making Gauss a Hero
In the early 19th century, the Prussian minister Wilhelm von Humboldt
sought to introduce mathematics as a
discipline per se in higher education.
To do so, he needed an icon to represent
German mathematics. He turned to the
one German who had been praised in
a report on the progress of mathematics to emperor Napoleon: Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855). Also, the new
generation of mathematicians favored
a conceptual approach over computations and saw Gauss as the herald of
this new style of mathematics. As such,
Gauss became synonymous with German mathematics for both political as
well as more internal reasons.
Toward the end of the 19th
century, the prominent mathematician
Felix Klein developed this Gauss image into a programmatic vision. From
1886 onward, he had started to actively
transform Göttingen’s mathematics
department into the world’s foremost
mathematical center. He promoted a
close alliance between pure and applied mathematics and got cooperation with the industry on the way. On
a national scale, he worked for the
professionalization of mathematics
education. To shape this disciplinary
empire, Klein, too, used Gauss.
In his 1893 address to the first International Congress for Mathematics
in Chicago, Klein talked about the latest developments in mathematics and
spoke of: a return to the general Gaussian programme [but] what was formerly
begun by a single master-mind [...] we
must now seek to accomplish by united
efforts and cooperation. 10
The edition of Gauss’ collected
works (1869–1929) provided an abun-
dance of historical material that Klein
used to build an image of Gauss sup-
porting his personal vision on math-
ematics. Klein portrayed Gauss as the
lofty German who was able to pursue
practical studies because of his theoret-
ical research, a portrayal that, although
very influential, was biased nonetheless.
In the 20th century, Klein’s interpretation of Gauss was picked up by the international mathematical community and
was modified accordingly. In the U.S.,
following Klein’s 1893 address, Gauss’s
fertile combination of pure and applied
struck a note for a mathematical community that often worked closely in alliance with industry. 11 In France, after
World War II, the Bourbaki-group emphasized the abstraction of Gauss’s work
that transcended national boundaries
and had helped pave the way for their
structural approach to mathematics.
However, in contrast with the Kleinian
“pure mathematician,” Gauss was also
“rediscovered” after the birth of the digital computer as a great calculator and
explorer of the mathematical discourse. 4
Making Turing a Hero
Just like Gauss was instrumental to
Humboldt and Klein to further the institutionalization of mathematics, Turing
played a similar role in the professionalization of the ACM in the 1960s. This
goes back to the 1950s, when some influential ACM members, including John
W. Carr III, Saul Gorn, and Alan J. Perlis,
wanted to connect their programming
feats to modern logic. Stephen Kleene’s
Introduction to Metamathematics (1952),
which contained a recast account of
Turing’s 1936 paper “On computable
numbers,” was an important source.
In 1954, Carr recommended programmers to deal with “the generation
of systems rather than the systems
themselves” and with “the ‘generation’
of algorithms by other algorithms,”
and hence with concepts akin to meta-
The first wave
of recognition
that Turing received
posthumously
is but a ripple
when compared to
the second wave.