At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists began wondering whether mental work could be mechanized just like physical labor. This video explores how that question led Alan Turing to design the ...

In 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, the Allied forces facing Germany had a problem. While it was easy to intercept German wireless communications, their content was difficult to decipher as ...

The goal of the “busy beaver” game is to find the longest-running computer program. Its pursuit has surprising connections to some of the most profound questions and concepts in mathematics.

Once upon a time, over 40 years ago, a horde of computer scientists descended on the West German city of Dortmund. They were competing to catch an elusive quarry — only four of its kind had ever been ...

BLETCHLEY, England— A founding father of the modern computer, Alan Turing devised a machine that unraveled the enigma of Nazi codes and aided the defeat of Adolf Hitler. Convicted of homosexuality ...

This year’s honor will go to Avi Wigderson, an Israeli-born mathematician and theoretical computer scientist who specializes in randomness. By Cade Metz Reporting from San Francisco Computers seem ...