This year the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) is marking 50 years of its most prestigious prize, the A.M. Turing Award. The celebrations will culminate in a conference in June, to be held in San Francisco  and also streamed live online, exploring how computing has evolved and where the field is headed.

Announcing its plans to celebrate 50 years of the award that honors the memory and legacy of Alan Turing, the ACM writes:

Since its inauguration in 1966, the ACM A. M. Turing Award has recognized major contributions of lasting importance in computing. Through the years, it has become the most prestigious technical award in the field, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of computing.

During the next several months, ACM will celebrate 50 years of the Turing Award and the visionaries who have received it. Our aim is to highlight the significant impact of the contributions of the Turing Laureates on computing and society, to look ahead to the future of technology and innovation, and to help inspire the next generation of computer scientists to invent and dream. 

In this video publicizing the June conference, ACM Vicki Hanson outlines the award and some distinguished laureates - Edward Feigenbaum, Silvio Micali, Robert Kahn, Barbara Liskov, Donald Knuth, Shafi Goldwasser, Vint Cerf and Raj Reddy - look at the impact computing has made over the period since it was established:

A recent addition to the ACM site, Spotlight on Turing Laureates has short biographies, not only of those included in the video but many others. At the moment it isn't, however, the full list - it doesn't include the earliest winners such as Alan Perlis, Maurice Wilkes and Marvin Minsky and also omits the most recent two, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, winners of  the 2015 award. Nor is it exclusively living laureates since it lists some distinguished deceased recipients including John McCarthy and Dennis Ritchie, but leaves out others who are still alive such as Charles Bachman and Niklaus Wirth.

The ACM conference to celebrate 50 years of the Turing Award will feature many of its recipients together with other leading researchers in computer science takes place on June 23 - 24 to coincide with the ACM's annual award ceremony.

More Information

ACM Turing Award 50 Celebration

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