Irving John Good (9 December 1916 – 5 April 2009)
[The Times of 16-apr-09, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6100314.ece ]
was a British mathematician who worked as a
cryptologist
This is a list of cryptographers. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries.
Pre twentieth century
* Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) book ...
at
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
with
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...
. After the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Good continued to work with Turing on the design of computers and
Bayesian statistics
Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, ...
at the
University of Manchester
, mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity
, established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...
. Good moved to the United States where he was professor at
Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...
.
He was born Isadore Jacob Gudak to a
Polish Jewish
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...
family in London. He later anglicised his name to Irving John Good and signed his publications "I. J. Good."
An originator of the concept now known as "
intelligence explosion
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the m ...
," Good served as consultant on supercomputers to
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
, director of the 1968 film ''
2001: A Space Odyssey''.
[
]
Life
Good was born Isadore Jacob Gudak to Polish Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
parents in London. His father was a watchmaker, who later managed and owned a successful fashionable jewellery shop, and was also a notable Yiddish writer writing under the pen name
A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen na ...
of Moshe Oved. Good was educated at the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School
Haberdashers' Boys' School (also known as Haberdashers', Habs, or Habs Boys), until September 2021 known as Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, is a public school for pupils age 4 to 18 in Elstree, Hertfordshire, England. The school is a mem ...
, at the time in Hampstead
Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from Watling Street, the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the Lon ...
in northwest London, where, according to Dan van der Vat
Daniel Francis Jeroen van der Vat (28 October 1939 – 9 May 2019) was a journalist, writer and military historian, with a focus on naval history.
Born in Alkmaar, North Holland, Van der Vat grew up in the German- occupied Netherlands. He attended ...
, Good effortlessly outpaced the mathematics curriculum
In education, a curriculum (; : curricula or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view ...
.
Good studied mathematics at Jesus College, Cambridge
Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes fr ...
, graduating in 1938 and winning the Smith's Prize
The Smith's Prize was the name of each of two prizes awarded annually to two research students in mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1769. Following the reorganization in 1998, they are now awarded under the n ...
in 1940. He did research under G.H. Hardy
Godfrey Harold Hardy (7 February 1877 – 1 December 1947) was an English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. In biology, he is known for the Hardy–Weinberg principle, a basic principle of pop ...
and Abram Besicovitch
Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch (or Besikovitch) (russian: link=no, Абра́м Само́йлович Безико́вич; 23 January 1891 – 2 November 1970) was a Russian mathematician, who worked mainly in England. He was born in Berdyansk ...
before moving to Bletchley Park in 1941 on completing his doctorate.
Bletchley Park
On 27 May 1941, having just obtained his doctorate at Cambridge, Good walked into Hut 8
Hut 8 was a section in the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park (the British World War II codebreaking station, located in Buckinghamshire) tasked with solving German naval (Kriegsmarine) Enigma messages. The section was l ...
, Bletchley's facility for breaking German naval ciphers, for his first shift. This was the day that Britain's Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
destroyed the after it had sunk the Royal Navy's . Bletchley had contributed to ''Bismarck''s destruction by discovering, through wireless-traffic analysis, that the German flagship was sailing for Brest, France
Brest (; ) is a port city in the Finistère department, Brittany. Located in a sheltered bay not far from the western tip of the peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French mi ...
, rather than Wilhelmshaven
Wilhelmshaven (, ''Wilhelm's Harbour''; Northern Low Saxon: ''Willemshaven'') is a coastal town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the western side of the Jade Bight, a bay of the North Sea, and has a population of 76,089. Wilhelmsha ...
, from which she had set out.
Hut 8 had not, however, been able to decrypt on a current basis the 22 German Naval Enigma
Enigma may refer to:
*Riddle, someone or something that is mysterious or puzzling
Biology
*ENIGMA, a class of gene in the LIM domain
Computing and technology
*Enigma (company), a New York-based data-technology startup
* Enigma machine, a family o ...
messages that had been sent to ''Bismarck''. The German Navy's Enigma cyphers were considerably more secure than those of the German Army or Air Force, which had been well penetrated by 1940. Naval messages were taking three to seven days to decrypt, which usually made them operationally useless for the British. This was about to change, however, with Good's help.
Good served with Turing for nearly two years.
Subsequently, he worked with Donald Michie
Donald Michie (; 11 November 1923 – 7 July 2007) was a British researcher in artificial intelligence. During World War II, Michie worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, contributing to the effort to solve " Tunny ...
in Max Newman
Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman, FRS, (7 February 1897 – 22 February 1984), generally known as Max Newman, was a British mathematician and codebreaker. His work in World War II led to the construction of Colossus, the world's first operatio ...
's group on the Fish
Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...
cipher
In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...
s, leading to the development of the Colossus computer
Colossus was a set of computers developed by British codebreakers in the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus ...
.
Good was a member of the Bletchley Chess Club which defeated the 8–4 in a twelve-board team match held on 2 December 1944. Good played fourth board for Bletchley Park, with C.H.O'D. Alexander
Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander (19 April 1909 – 15 February 1974), known as Hugh Alexander and C. H. O'D. Alexander, was an Irish-born British cryptanalyst, chess player, and chess writer. He worked on the German Enigma machine at ...
, Harry Golombek
Harry Golombek OBE (1 March 1911 – 7 January 1995) was a British chess player, chess author, and wartime codebreaker. He was three times British chess champion, in 1947, 1949, and 1955 and finished second in 1948.
He was born in Lambeth t ...
and James Macrae Aitken
James Macrae Aitken (27 October 1908 – 3 December 1983) was a Scottish chess player. Aitken was born in Calderbank, Lanarkshire, Scotland. In 1938 he received a PhD from Edinburgh University on the topic of 'The Trial of George Buchanan Befor ...
in the top three spots. He won his game against Sir Robert Robinson.
Postwar work
In 1947 Newman invited Good to join him and Turing at Manchester University
, mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity
, established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...
. There for three years Good lectured in mathematics and researched computers, including the Manchester Mark 1
The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchester, England from the Manchester Baby (operational in June 1948). Work began in August 1948, and the first version was operat ...
.
In 1948 Good was recruited by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ
Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Unit ...
), successor to Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
. He remained there until 1959, while also taking up a brief associate professorship at Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
and a short consultancy with IBM.
From 1959 until he moved to the US in 1967, Good held government-funded positions and from 1964 a senior research fellowship at Trinity College, Oxford
(That which you wish to be secret, tell to nobody)
, named_for = The Holy Trinity
, established =
, sister_college = Churchill College, Cambridge
, president = Dame Hilary Boulding
, location = Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BH
, coordinates ...
, and the Atlas Computer Laboratory
The Atlas Computer Laboratory on the Harwell, Oxfordshire campus shared by the Harwell Laboratory was one of the major computer laboratories in the world, which operated between 1961 and 1975 to provide a service to British scientists at a tim ...
, where he continued his interests in computing, statistics and chess. He later left Oxford, declaring it "a little stiff".
United States
In 1967 Good moved to the United States, where he was appointed a research professor of statistics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six regi ...
. In 1969 he was appointed a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, and in 1994 Emeritus University Distinguished Professor.
In 1973 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association
Like many other academic professional societies, the American Statistical Association (ASA) uses the title of Fellow of the American Statistical Association as its highest honorary grade of membership. The number of new fellows per year is limited ...
.
He later said about his arrival in Virginia (from Britain) in 1967 to start teaching at VPI, where he taught from 1967 to 1994:
Research and publications
Good's published work ran to over three million words.
He was known for his work on Bayesian statistics
Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a ''degree of belief'' in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, ...
. Kass
KASS is a commercial radio station located in Casper, Wyoming, broadcasting on 106.9 FM. KASS airs a classic rock music format, branded as "Kick 107". The music programming is syndicated by Westwood One. All Mt. Rushmore Casper stations are lo ...
and Raftery
Raftery is a surname originating in Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Grea ...
credit Good (and in turn Turing) with coining the term ''Bayes factor
The Bayes factor is a ratio of two competing statistical models represented by their marginal likelihood, and is used to quantify the support for one model over the other. The models in questions can have a common set of parameters, such as a nu ...
''. Good published a number of books on probability theory
Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...
. In 1958 he published an early version of what later became known as the fast Fourier transform
A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse (IDFT). Fourier analysis converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in th ...
but it did not become widely known. He played chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
to county standard and helped popularise Go, an Asian boardgame, through a 1965 article in ''New Scientist
''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publishe ...
'' (he had learned the rules from Alan Turing). In 1965 he originated the concept now known as "intelligence explosion
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the m ...
" or the "technological singularity
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the m ...
", which anticipates the eventual advent of superhuman intelligence:
Good's authorship of treatises such as his 1965 "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine" and "Logic of Man and Machine" made him the obvious person for Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
to consult when filming '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968), one of whose principal characters was the paranoid HAL 9000
HAL 9000 is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke's ''Space Odyssey'' series. First appearing in the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', HAL ( Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer ...
supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
. In 1995 Good was elected a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motio ...
. Graphcore
Graphcore is a British semiconductor company that develops accelerators for AI and machine learning. It aims to make a massively parallel Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) that holds the complete machine learning model inside the processor.
Hi ...
's proposed foundation model $600m computer, that uses Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Human-centered computing (HCC) studies the design, development, and deployment of mixed-initiative human-computer systems. It is emerged from the convergence of multiple disciplines that are concerned both with understanding human beings and w ...
, which will have the potential capacity of running programs with 500trn parameters, was named to honor Good's intellectual heritage.[The ]Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...
's (HAI) Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM) describes foundation models as "models trained on broad data at scale...hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
will not only transform how AI systems are built, but will also lead to significant societal consequences." Examples of foundational models include BERT
Bert or BERT may refer to:
Persons, characters, or animals known as Bert
*Bert (name), commonly an abbreviated forename and sometimes a surname
*Bert, a character in the poem "Bert the Wombat" by The Wiggles; from their 1992 album Here Comes a Son ...
, GPT-3
Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. Given an initial text as prompt, it will produce text that continues the prompt.
The architecture is a standard ...
, CLIP
Clip or CLIP may refer to:
Fasteners
* Hair clip, a device used to hold hair together or attaching materials such as caps to the hair
* Binder clip, a device used for holding thicker materials (such as large volumes of paper) together
** Bulldog ...
, and Codex
The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...
. According to The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
, Graphcore aims to take the "first step" towards creating I. J. Good's imagined "Ultraintelligent Machine".
According to his assistant, Leslie Pendleton, in 1998 Good wrote in an unpublished autobiographical statement that he suspected an ultraintelligent machine would lead to the extinction of man.
Personality
Good published a paper under the names IJ Good and "K Caj Doog"—the latter, his own nickname spelled backwards. In a 1988 paper, he introduced its subject by saying, "Many people have contributed to this topic but I shall mainly review the writings of I. J. Good because I have read them all carefully." In Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
he chose, as his vanity licence plate
A vanity plate or personalized plate (United States and Canada); prestige plate, private number plate, cherished plate or personalised registration (United Kingdom); personalised plate (Australia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom) or custom pla ...
, "007IJG," in subtle reference to his Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
work.
Good never married. After going through ten assistants in his first thirteen years at Virginia Tech, he hired Leslie Pendleton, who proved up to the task of managing his quirks. He wanted to marry her, but she refused. Although there was speculation, they were never more than friends, but she was his assistant, companion, and friend for the rest of his life.
Death
Good died on 5 April 2009 of natural causes
In many legal jurisdictions, the manner of death is a determination, typically made by the coroner, medical examiner, police, or similar officials, and recorded as a vital statistic. Within the United States and the United Kingdom, a distinct ...
in Radford, Virginia, aged 92.
Books
*
*
*
*
*
See also
*Good–Turing frequency estimation
Good–Turing frequency estimation is a statistical technique for estimating the probability of encountering an object of a hitherto unseen species, given a set of past observations of objects from different species. In drawing balls from an urn, t ...
*Cryptanalysis of the Enigma
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma ciphering system enabled the western Allies in World War II to read substantial amounts of Morse-coded radio communications of the Axis powers that had been enciphered using Enigma machines. This yielded military in ...
* MacMahon Master theorem
In mathematics, MacMahon's master theorem (MMT) is a result in enumerative combinatorics and linear algebra. It was discovered by Percy MacMahon and proved in his monograph ''Combinatory analysis'' (1916). It is often used to derive binomial iden ...
Notes
References
Bibliography
* Dan van der Vat, "Jack Good" (obituary), ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', 29 April 2009, p. 32.
* Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
Nicholas Hugh Sebag-Montefiore (born 5 March 1955) is a British writer. He trained as a barrister before becoming a journalist and then a non-fiction writer. His second book ''Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man'' was published in 2006. His previous b ...
, ''Enigma: The Battle for the Code'', London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000, .
External links
*
Good's web page
at Virginia Tech
Bibliography ("Shorter Publications List", running to 2300 items) (PDF)
focusing on Good's role in the history of computing
Project Euclid
An interview with Good can be downloaded from here
VT Image Base
Photographs
Obituary
Virginia Tech, 6 April 2009
''Daily Telegraph
Daily or The Daily may refer to:
Journalism
* Daily newspaper, newspaper issued on five to seven day of most weeks
* ''The Daily'' (podcast), a podcast by ''The New York Times''
* ''The Daily'' (News Corporation), a defunct US-based iPad new ...
'', 10 April 2009
Obituary
''The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', 16 April 2009
Obituary
''The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', 14 May 2009
Eulogy
Mathematical eulogy (with Maple
''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since http ...
code) by Doron Zeilberger
Doron Zeilberger (דורון ציילברגר, born 2 July 1950 in Haifa, Israel) is an Israeli mathematician, known for his work in combinatorics.
Education and career
He received his doctorate from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1976, ...
, 2 December 2009
{{DEFAULTSORT:Good, I. J.
1916 births
2009 deaths
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
20th-century American philosophers
Alan Turing
Alumni of Jesus College, Cambridge
American people of British-Jewish descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American statisticians
Artificial intelligence researchers
Bayesian statisticians
British cryptographers
British information theorists
British people of Polish-Jewish descent
English emigrants to the United States
English Jews
English mathematicians
English statisticians
Fellows of the American Statistical Association
GCHQ people
Modern cryptographers
Bletchley Park people
People educated at Haberdashers' Boys' School
People from Hampstead
People from Radford, Virginia
Singularitarians
Theoretical computer scientists
Foreign Office personnel of World War II
Mathematicians from Virginia
American cosmologists