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Engineering Education Scheme (England) student, Alex Smith Wins $25,000 Wolfram Research Prize
Wolfram Research and Stephen Wolfram announced in October that 20-year-old Alex Smith, a student from the University of Birmingham, had won the US $25,000 Wolfram 2,3 Turing Machine Research Prize.
In his 2002 book A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram hypothesized that a particular abstract Turing machine might be the simplest system of its type capable of acting as a universal computer. In May 2007, the Wolfram 2,3 Turing Machine Research Prize was established to be awarded to the first person or group to prove, or disprove, the theory.
Alex Smith was able to demonstrate, with a 50-page proof, that Wolfram’s Turing machine is indeed universal, ending a half century quest to find the simplest universal Turing machine. It demonstrates that a remarkably simple system can perform any computation that can be done by any computer. It also provides important further evidence for Wolfram’s general Principle of Computational Equivalence, a central hypothesis developed in A New Kind of Science.
"I had no idea how long it would take for the prize to be won", said Stephen Wolfram. "It could have taken a year, a decade, or a century. I’m thrilled it was so quick. It's an impressive piece of work."
The immediate implications of the result are primarily scientific. But potential future implications include the possibility of using Wolfram’s 2,3 Turing machine to construct a computer operating at a molecular scale.
“I saw the prize problem primarily as a puzzle,” said Alex Smith. “At first, I didn’t think the Turing machine would be universal. But then I found a way to show that it is.” Alex took part in the Engineering Education Scheme (England) in 2003/04, working in a team of 5 students from King Edward VI Five Ways School on a project with Network Rail, in which the team had to devise a solution to a real problem set by Network Rail.
He is now an undergraduate studying Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of Birmingham. He grew up in Birmingham and was an alternate for the UK International Mathematical Olympiad team. Smith's proof will be published in journal Complex Systems and an official prize ceremony will be held at Bletchley Park, UK, site of Alan Turing's wartime work. The prize is part of Wolfram Research’s ongoing commitment to the support of scientific research and education.
EDT would like to congratulate Alex on this tremendous achievement and to wish him well in the future. For more information about the prize see: http://www.wolframprize.org - the prize won today
For more information about the Engineering Education Scheme (England) please visit www.thescheme.org.uk