Lenore Blum

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Howey Physics Building Room L4 at 5pm

Alan Turing and the Other Theory of Computing

Speaker:   Lenore Blum
                  Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science
                  Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)

Abstract: 

Most logicians and theoretical computer scientists are familiar with Alan Turing’s 1936 seminal paper setting the stage for the foundational (discrete) theory of computation. Most however remain unaware of Turing’s 1948 seminal paper which introduces the notion of condition, setting the stage for a natural theory of complexity for the “other theory of computation.”

Computational mathematics, the “other theory of computation,” emanates from the classical tradition of numerical analysis, equation solving and the continuous mathematics of calculus. 

This talk will recognize Alan Turing’s work in the foundations of numerical computation (in particular, his 1948 paper “Rounding-Off Errors in Matrix Processes”), its influence in complexity theory today, and how it provides a unifying concept for the two major traditions of the Theory of Computation.