<p>[Princeton</a> Alumni Weekly: Daybreak of the Digital Age](<a href=“http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2012/04/04/pages/5444/index.xml]Princeton”>http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2012/04/04/pages/5444/index.xml)</p>
<p>Just before the Second World War, a Big Idea was detonated: the idea of the computer. The world has never been the same. </p>
<p>Princetonians played a key role. [At Princeton] graduate student Alan Turing *38 finalized his landmark paper, On Computable Numbers, the light-bulb moment in which humankind first discovered the concept of stored-program computers. And here one of his professors, John von Neumann, would build just such a device after the war, MANIAC at the Institute for Advanced Study, forerunner of virtually every computer on the planet today. </p>
<p>Of course other people were involved, and other institutions Penn had its pioneering wartime ENIAC machine but Turing and von Neumann arguably were the two towering figures in launching computers into the world. As George Dyson claims in his new book on early computing at the Institute, Turings Cathedral, the entire digital universe can be traced to MANIAC, the physical realization of Turings dreams.</p>
<p>June 2012 marks the centennial of Turings birth in London, and universities around the world including Princeton and Cambridge, where Turing did the research that led to his landmark paper are celebrating with conferences, talks, and even races. </p>
<p>Mathematicians are calling 2012 Alan Turing Year. Since the year also is the 60th anniversary of the public unveiling of MANIAC, this seems a particularly good time to recall the part Princeton played in the birth of all things digital. . . . (continued)</p>
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<p>Princeton has a long and storied involvement in mathematics and computer science and carries on that tradition today as reflected in the most recently released National Research Council rankings. The NRC rankings have been considered the “gold standard” of academic department rankings in the U.S. for many years. Averaging the ‘R’ and ‘S’ scores for computer science leads to the following 2010 national ranking.</p>
<p>2010 NATIONAL RANKING OF COMPUTER SCIENCE PROGRAMS
ACCORDING TO THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL</p>
<p>1—Stanford
2—Princeton
3—MIT
4—Berkeley
5—Carnegie Mellon
6—Cornell
7—Harvard
8—UC Santa Barbara
9—Penn
10–UCLA</p>
<p>[PhDs.org</a> Graduate School Guide](<a href=“http://graduate-school.phds.org/]PhDs.org”>http://graduate-school.phds.org/) </p>
<p>[Computer</a> Sciences Rankings PhDs.org Graduate School Guide](<a href=“http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/computer-science/rank/]Computer”>http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/computer-science/rank/)</p>
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<p>For more information about the study of computer science at Princeton see:</p>
<p>[Computer</a> Science Department at Princeton University](<a href=“http://www.cs.princeton.edu/]Computer”>http://www.cs.princeton.edu/)</p>
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<p>. . . and for a story about the Princeton student winners of the 2012 NYC Hackathon see:</p>
<p>[Princeton</a> Students Win 2012 hackNY Competition](<a href=“http://www.betabeat.com/2012/03/28/cloudspeaker-proves-the-easiest-way-to-win-a-hackathon-is-by-rickrolling-the-audience/]Princeton”>http://www.betabeat.com/2012/03/28/cloudspeaker-proves-the-easiest-way-to-win-a-hackathon-is-by-rickrolling-the-audience/)</p>
<p>Last weekends hackNY Hackathon at NYUs Courant Institute culled some of the best young engineering minds from the East Coast to compete in a 24-hour code battle to the DEATH (okay, not really). But stillintense! The main project criteria for this hackathon? Awesomeness, obviously.</p>
<p>For seriously this is not a hackathon about building something with a huge market or a minimum viable product or something, reads the Hacker League page. Build something that blows away the judges with creativity and skill, either in design or technical winning.</p>
<p>By the afternoon on Sunday, three teams would place, but only one could be declared the first place victor. That winning team? cLoudspeaker, a collection of Princeton and Rutgers students that built an app to crowdsource music through laptops. . . (continued)
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