Jack Copeland

Distinguished ProfessorJack Copeland

Head of Department - Philosophy
Karl Popper 619

Qualifications

Research Interests

Jack Copeland FRS NZ is Distinguished Professor in Arts at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he is Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing. An Honorary Research Professor in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland, in 2013-14 he was Visiting Professor of Information Science at Copenhagen University. In 2012 was the Royden B. Davis Visiting Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University, Washington DC.

A Londoner by birth, Jack earned a D.Phil. in mathematical logic from the University of Oxford, studying under Turing's great friend Robin Gandy.

Oxford University Press (OUP) recently published his biography 'Turing' and his comprehensive 'The Turing Guide'. Other books include 'The Essential Turing' (OUP), 'Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park’s Codebreaking Computers' (OUP), 'Alan Turing’s Electronic Brain' (OUP), 'Computability: Turing, Gödel, Church, and Beyond' (MIT Press), 'Logic and Reality' (OUP), and 'Artificial Intelligence' (Wiley-Blackwell). He has more than 100 journal articles on the philosophy and history of computing, and on mathematical and philosophical logic.

In 2016 he received the Covey Award, recognizing a substantial record of innovative research in the field of computing and philosophy. In 2017 Jack's name was added to the IT History Society Honor Roll for his "out-of-the-ordinary contribution to the information industry"

Recent Publications

  • Fresco N., Copeland BJ. and Wolf MJ. (2021) The indeterminacy of computation. Synthese 199(5-6): 12753-12775. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03352-9.
  • Board of Directors, TCZ. (2020) ETH Turing Centre Zurich Evaluation Report 2015-2020.1-56.
  • Copeland BJ. and Long J. (2020) “Back to 1951: Alan Turing’s Computer Music”. Creator and curator of exhibit: World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Geneva, Switzerland. 1 Sep-31 Dec 2020. [Virtual].
  • Copeland J. (2020) “Prior, Arthur”.. In Zalta E (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Stanford University.
  • Copeland J. (2020) “How accurate was that Turing movie?”. The Turing Conversation(January 2020) Zurich: ETH. [ETH website].