From left to right: Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Kurt Gedel and Alanzo Church
A conference on The origins and nature of computation will be held next week on June 12-15. The first two days (Monday and Tuesday) will be held at Tel Aviv University and the last (Wednesday-Thursday) at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.
Many people are currently interested in the history of computation, computers and computer science, but there are relatively few books and conferences in the field. Next week's conference brings together the best historians and philosophers in the field and some of the pioneers who worked in the 40s and 50s in the fields of logic and computer science. Also participating are two Turing Prize winners (the "Nobel") of computer science): Prof. Michael Rabin from Harvard University and the Hebrew University (automata theory, complexity and encryption, probabilistic algorithms) and Prof. John McCarthy from Stanford University (father of the field of artificial intelligence). The conference will include lectures on Babbage, Turing, Gedel and Church, on the development of electronic computers, on the growth of computer science, globalization and the Internet. There will also be a symposium on the history of computer science departments
and hi-tech in Israel.
More details about the conference can be found on the website. The entrance is free.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~497964241~~~80&SiteName=hayadan
