In 1936, whilst studying for his Ph.D. at Princeton University, the English mathematician Alan Turing published a paper, “On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem,” which became the foundation of computer science. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by simple instructions encoded on [...]

A Wikipedia edit-a-thon seems like a fitting tribute to the woman many consider to be the first computer programmer. October 16 is Ada Lovelace Day, an annual observation designed to raise awareness of the contributions of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines. Groups in the U.S., U.K., Sweden and India are marking [...]

The Inamori Foundation announced this year’s Kyoto Prizes today. Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi won the prize in Basic Science, and Dr. Ivan Edward Sutherland won the prize in Advanced Technology. Ohsumi, a professor at the Frontier Research Center of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, won for his pioneering work on autophagy. From the Greek for “self-eating,” [...]

A team of researchers has successfully factored a 232-digit number into its two composite prime-number factors, but too late to claim a $50,000 prize once attached to the achievement. The number, RSA-768, was part of a cryptography challenge that technically ended in 2007 that had been sponsored by RSA Laboratories, a prominent computer-security firm. RSA-768, [...]