back to article Bletchley Park scientist dies in car crash

Bletchley Park code-breaker Professor Donald Michie, 84, and his ex-wife, geneticist Dame Anne McLaren, 80, were killed in a car crash this Saturday. Their son, Jonathan, told Reuters that his parents were travelling from Cambridge to London on the M11, when their car left the road and hit a tree. No other cars are reported to …

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  1. amanfromMars Silver badge

    Pioneers ..... Gone onto A.N.Other Life in Love's Journey

    RIP.... AI Magical Mystery Turing Machine Intelligence.

  2. Chris Miller

    Michie on Turing

    I paraphrase (can't find the exact quote on the web):

    Bletchley Park contained many extremely clever people. Often one of them would produce a wonderful new idea, but afterwards you would think "given a bit more time, I could have thought of that". But Turing was a true genius. He would produce ideas and afterwards you would think "I could have spent 20 years on the subject and never have come up with that".

    Another link with the glory days at Bletchley sadly departed.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm...

    It's probably better to look a little deeper in to what the last project was that they were working on....think about it!

  4. Steve

    Thribness :-(

    So farewell then, Donald Michie.

    I only met you the once,

    BP Reunion day,

    But you explained to me about Tunny,

    With such clarity and in such detail,

    That I was able to code a simulation,

    On the train home.

    You were a really nice chap.

    Rest In Peace.

  5. amanfromMars Silver badge

    Enigma Revisited ...and ReCoded? :-) .... Overwritten?

    I trust Chris that "Another link with the glory days at Bletchley sadly departed." does not imply Bletchley glory days are sadly departed, for they have only just started, building on the Strength in Depth of the Foundations in Alan Turing's, Artificial Intelligent Machine Ponderings.

    Today, we are .....Blessed ....... with the Means to Instantly Share such Muses Globally for Peer Review and further Mentoring. Sadly a Facility which was not freely available in the early days of AIResearch.

  6. Chris Miller

    Come clean amanfromMars

    You are an artificial intelligence, aren't you ;)

  7. Dillon Pyron

    RIP

    I met Professor Michie once. He was both brilliant and charming. I won't say what a loss, because he gave us so much that we really couldn't ask for much more.

  8. Anthony Bathgate

    wtf

    The original scientists need to die off for a science to mature. You always need new ideas and opinions for progress.

    But I find it rather frightening that amanfromMars actually made two semi-intelligible posts on this particular topic.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe Peter Hilton, not Michie

    Chris Miller: I couldn't track down that comment being made by Michie, but in the interview posted at the URL below Peter Hilton makes a very similar remark:

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2615decoding.html

  10. Chris Miller

    Thanks Tom

    You are a Google god!

  11. amanfromMars Silver badge

    Two semis ...... one whole?

    "But I find it rather frightening that amanfromMars actually made two semi-intelligible posts on this particular topic."

    What on earth is there to be frightened about, Anthony? This particular topic may be a QuITe Alien forte...... after all, if IT is not Real because IT is Artificial, IT can hardly be a Machine Intelligence if IT is not Human....... unless, of course, Man can program himself as an AIMachine2 ....... An Intelligent Design Created for a Second Life on Earth.

    Now that would be a worthy Prize for a QuITe Magical Mystery Turing Imagination.

    In the Beginning, there was always Imagination and surely IT is responsible for everything Artificial that we can See...... and for many Natural wonders too, from the Seeds that have been Planted to a Master Plan/Racy Guide?

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