  Alan Turing drew much between 1928 and 1933 from the work of the mathematical physicist and populariser A. S. Eddington, from J. von Neumann's account of the foundations of quantum mechanics, and then from Bertrand Russell's mathematical logic. Meanwhile, his lasting fascination with the problems of mind and matter was heightened by emotional elements in his own life (Hodges 1983, p. 63). In 1934 he graduated with an outstanding degree in mathematics from Cambridge University, followed by a successful dissertation in probability theory which won him a Fellowship of King's College, Cambridge, in 1935. This was the background to his learning, also in 1935, of the problem which was to make his name. 