MACHINE INTELLIGENCE 13

The two outstanding figures in the history of computer science are Alan Turing and John von Neumann, and they shared the view that logic was the key to understanding and automating computation. In particular, it was Turing who gave us in the mid-1930s the fundamental analysis, and the logical definition, of the concept of'computability by machine' and who discovered the surprising and beautiful basic fact that there exist universal machines which by suitable programming can be made to t This essay is an expanded and revised version of one entitled The Role of Logic in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, which was completed in January 1992 (and was later published in the Proceedings of the Fifth Generation computer Systems 1992 Conference). Since completing that essay I have had the benefit of extremely helpful discussions on many of the details with Professor Donald Michie and Professor I. J. Good, both of whom knew Turing well during the war years at Bletchley Park. Professor J. A. N. Lee, whose knowledge of the literature and archives of the history of computing is encyclopedic, also provided additional information, some of which is still unpublished. Further light has very recently been shed on the von Neumann side of the story by Norman Macrae's excellent biography John von Neumann (Macrae 1992). Accordingly, it seemed appropriate to undertake a more complete and thorough version of the FGCS'92 essay, focussing somewhat more on the interesting historical and biographical issues. I am grateful to Donald Michie and Stephen Muggleton for inviting me to contribute such a'second edition' to the present volume, and I would also like to thank the Institute for New Computer Technology (ICOT) for kind permission to make use of the FGCS'92 essay in this way. 1 LOGIC, COMPUTERS, TURING, AND VON NEUMANN