[3][4][5] The award is named after Alan Turing, who was a British mathematician and reader in mathematics at the University of Manchester.

Turing is often credited as being the founder of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence,[6] and a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the Enigma cipher during World War II.

[11] Only three women have been awarded the prize: Frances Allen (in 2006),[12] Barbara Liskov (in 2008),[13] and Shafi Goldwasser (in 2012).

[14] As of 2024[update], 77 people have been awarded the prize, with the most recent recipient, in 2023, being Avi Wigderson.

In addition, he formulated and strongly advanced full abstraction, the study of the relationship between operational and denotational semantics.