Did Turing prove the undecidability of the halting problem?
Logic
2025-12-01 v3 Logic in Computer Science
Abstract
We discuss the accuracy of the attribution commonly given to Turing's 1936 paper "On computable numbers..." for the computable undecidability of the halting problem, coming eventually to a nuanced conclusion.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2407.00680,
title = {Did Turing prove the undecidability of the halting problem?},
author = {Joel David Hamkins and Theodor Nenu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.00680},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
19 pages. Commentary may be made on the first author's blog at https://jdh.hamkins.org/turing-halting-problem. Minor revisions in v2 and v3