Brian Jack Copeland (born 1950) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury,

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, and author of books on the computing pioneer

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

Education

Copeland was educated at the

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, obtaining a Bachelor of Philosophy degree and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

degree in 1978, where he undertook research on

modal logic Modal logic is a kind of logic used to represent statements about Modality (natural language), necessity and possibility. In philosophy and related fields it is used as a tool for understanding concepts such as knowledge, obligation, and causality ...

and

non-classical logic Non-classical logics (and sometimes alternative logics or non-Aristotelian logics) are formal systems that differ in a significant way from standard logical systems such as propositional and predicate logic. There are several ways in which this ...

supervised by

Dana Scott Dana Stewart Scott (born October 11, 1932) is an American logician who is the emeritus Hillman University Professor of Computer Science, Philosophy, and Mathematical Logic at Carnegie Mellon University; he is now retired and lives in Berkeley, C ...

Career and research

Jack Copeland is the Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing, an extensive online archive on the computing pioneer

. He has also written and edited books on Turing. He is one of the people responsible for identifying the concept of

hypercomputation Hypercomputation or super-Turing computation is a set of hypothetical models of computation that can provide outputs that are not Turing-computable. For example, a machine that could solve the halting problem would be a hypercomputer; so too woul ...

and machines more capable than

Turing machine A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation describing an abstract machine that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model's simplicity, it is capable of implementing any computer algori ...

s. With Jason Long he restored some of the first computer music recorded on the Ferranti Mark I. Copeland has held visiting professorships at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

, Australia (1997, 2002), the University of Aarhus, Denmark (1999), the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

, Australia (2002, 2003), and the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom (1997–2005). In 2000, he was a Senior Fellow in the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, United States. Copeland is also President of the US Society for Machines and Mentality and a member of the UK Bletchley Park Trust Heritage Advisory Panel. He is the founding editor of '' The Rutherford Journal'', established in 2005. Jack-copeland-eth-zuerich

Jack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot suggested the establishment of a Turing Center in

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during a guest stay at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

in 2012. The idea was implemented and ETH Zurich was able to open the Turing Center Zurich in 2015. It is operational organizes regular conferences on questions related to computer, artificial intelligence and other.

''The Rutherford Journal''

Copeland serves as

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The editor-in-chief heads all departments of the organization and is held accoun ...

of ''The Rutherford Journal'', an

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

online

academic journal An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which Scholarly method, scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the ...

published in New Zealand that covers the

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

and

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

and

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

.About the Journal
''The Rutherford Journal''. The journal is published as needed and was established in December 2005 by Copeland. The full text of articles is freely available online in

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format. The journal is named after the New Zealand physicist

Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both Atomic physics, atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of nu ...

(1871–1937), who studied at the Canterbury College (

). The journal is indexed in various index lists. It was listed in an article on

electronic journal An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the dissemination, scr ...

s in the Journal for the Association of History and Computing and included in the ''Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences''. The journal features technology as diverse as totalisators and the CSIRAC computer.

Publications

* ''

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

: A Philosophical Introduction'' ( Blackwell, 1993, 2nd edition due) * ''Logic and Reality Essays on the Legacy of Arthur Prior'' (

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 1996) * ''The Essential Turing'' (Oxford University Press, 2004) (pbk); (hbk) * ''Alan Turing’s

Automatic Computing Engine The Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) was a British early Electronic storage, electronic Serial computer, serial stored-program computer design by Alan Turing. Turing completed the ambitious design in late 1945, having had experience in the yea ...

: The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to Build the Modern Computer'' (Oxford University Press, 2005) * '' Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers'' (Oxford University Press, 2006) * ''Alan Turing’s Electronic Brain: The Struggle to Build the ACE, the World’s Fastest Computer'' (Oxford University Press, 2012) * ''Computability: Turing, Gödel, Church, and Beyond'' (

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

, 2013). (with Carl Posy and Oron Shagrir) * ''Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age'' (Oxford University Press, 2014: Paperback edition) * '' The Turing Guide'' (Oxford University Press, 2017) (hardcover), (paperback) (with Jonathan Bowen, Robin Wilson, Mark Sprevak, et al.)

Awards and honours

Copeland was awarded Lecturer of the Year 2010 by the University of Canterbury's student union.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Copeland, Jack 1950 births Living people Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford 20th-century English philosophers 21st-century English philosophers 20th-century New Zealand philosophers Historians of science British historians of mathematics Academics of the University of Portsmouth Academic journal editors English male non-fiction writers Academic staff of the University of Canterbury