The programming language Thring is Damed for the British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Mathison lUring (1912-1954). Thrings contributions to computer science began in 1936, when he published a landmark paper on the limits of mechanical computation. The mathematical model introduced in the paper is now known as a unuing machine"" and forms the basis of the modern theory of computability. During World War II, Thring played an important role in the design of the Colossus, an electronic machine that deciphered. coded messages. In 1951, he proposed a test, now called the Thring test, to answer the question: Can a machine think? Today, the most distinguished award given by the worlds largest association for computing professionals, the Association for Computing Machinery, is called the Thring Award. The programming language Thring was designed by Richard C. Holt and James R. Cordy at the University of Toronto as a first language for computer science courses. Thring is a practical language suited to general-purpose applications.