Comment by abstractbeliefs

Comment by abstractbeliefs 10 days ago

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Forgotten not in the sense of lost knowledge, but more that the individual is not known proportionally to the importance of his work, or perhaps consistently when compared to his peers.

While specialists in his field know his work and his name (but not even everyone in software does), the public do not.

While your parents and friends see the dramatised exploits of Turing in films like The Imitation Game, or his face on the currency, the same is not said for Church.

Every field has it's public heroes, usually related to the stature of their work - Fleming and Jenner, Marconi, Ford, Bell. Turing.

Anyone will at least recognise these names, but not so for Church.

gilleain 10 days ago

Ok, and if I asked a random member of the public for the name of a mathematician (excepting Turing, for clarity) what name do you think they would come up with? Pythagoras? Euler? Erdős?

I think the reality is that only a very small number of scientists, mathematicians, and similar are household names.

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  • ggm 10 days ago

    People's conception of Turing is massively skewed by the ending. His persona is now defined by his sexuality and treatment more than his contributions to maths and computer science. Andrew Hodges book is great. I had the fortune to go to his author tour the year it came out, he was doing the compsci departments of the UK and it was a really nice seminar.

    Benedic Cumbersome was a good actor, but it's important to remember Michelangelo actually didn't look like Kirk Douglas.

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  • seanhunter 10 days ago

    Right - For every Newton, who (rightly) gets credit for his immense contributions, there are people like Euler, who are relatively unknown outside the field in spite of significant contributions[1].

    [1] Massive in the case of Euler obviously.

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    • drcwpl 10 days ago

      Agreed - what I tried to highlight through a series about people that have contributed significantly, but are not so well known outside of the fields they impacted, there is always cooperation to a large extent and others involved - rarely a lone individual as the Turing movie and much of the press in the UK likes to portray. And many people, who should be known, get lost in the complexity of history. It's worth bringing the attention of this to a wider audience - people are genuinely inquisitive. Plus as another example, on an intro course to AI 45 out of 52 bachelor students had never heard of Church!

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mitthrowaway2 10 days ago

Isn't that just because they haven't made a blockbuster feature film about him yet?

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