Reference Practice Question

Here was our prompt:

During WWII an eccentric scientist cracked a German code that was critical to Allied military success. Credited with inventing the foundations of artificial intelligence, he died quite young. What was his name, how did he die, why did people think him eccentric, and what was his most famous mathematical finding?

While I didn't realize it at the time, I used "pearling" to figure out answers to this prompt. My initial search (on Google, I can't resist its pull!) was "WWII German code cracker." That gave me some responses that included the word "cryptologist," so I changed my search terms to "WWII German cryptologist." Again, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was changing my search terms from my natural language terms into a more controlled vocabulary. I instinctively knew that "cryptologist" would garner more hits than "code cracker," both because it was one word and because it was a more controlled vocabulary word.

Then, my hit list included some responses on two possible people. Searches on those two people quickly led me to the correct answer- Alan Turing.

If you're interested in Alan Turing, by the way, there's a movie about his life starring Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet called "Enigma." Put it in your Netflix queue- I did.