The Architecture of Biological Complexity - Sydney Brenner

Speaker : Sydney Brenner Venue : J.N. Tata Auditorium, IISc, Bangalore Date and Time : 18 Oct 12, 18:00 In his paper “On Computable Numbers“ Turing proposed a way of performing mechanical procedures on binary inputs to test whether mathematical functions could be computed from a set of simple rules. The Turing machine, as it came to be called, worked on a tape which it could move in both directions and on which it could write and erase binary symbols. He proved that there was a Universal Turing Machine, which, given a description of any Turing machine could then carry out the particular computation of that machine. Modern computers and their stored programmes implement Universal Machines. von Neumann, following Turing, began to think about how machines could build other machines. He discovered that he could define a Universal Construction Machine, which given the description of any Constructor, could construct it. This led him to define the logical structure of a self-reproducing machi