Computers argued, cracked jokes and parried trick questions on Sunday as part of an annual test of artificial intelligence carried out at the University of Reading.

A campaign to save Bletchley Park, the legendary site where code-breakers toiled in secret to hasten the defeat of the Nazis and end the Second World War, is launched by The Independent today.

The mother of a seven-year-old girl who was allegedly kidnapped by her father during a supervised visit to the US has made an emotional televised appeal for her return.

The code-breaking centre that helped win the Second World War is in danger of irreparable decay unless the Government steps in to help, leading scientists said yesterday.

Bletchley Park at once exemplifies the best and worst of British. As the base for mathematicians and linguists hastily assembled in the early days of the Second World War, it became the headquarters of this country's top-secret code-breaking operation. The model of ingenious making-do and unfussy getting on with things, it is credited with breaking the German Enigma codes and ending the war sooner than would otherwise have been the case. The technology developed there laid the foundations of computer science.

Tony Spencer was Professor of Theoretical Mechanics at Nottingham University from 1965 to 1994 and a most distinguished applied mathematician. His research interests were unusually wide-ranging and he made outstanding contributions to several branches of solid mechanics. His special interest was in understanding and predicting the mechanical behaviour of advanced materials, an essential adjunct to the effective exploitation of these materials by the aerospace industries and elsewhere.

In the small world of the history of science and mathematics, D.T. Whiteside, Emeritus Professor of the History of Mathematics and the Exact Sciences at Cambridge University, was a towering figure. He was one of the most profound and exacting scholars produced by Britain in the second half of the 20th century. Tom Whiteside's central work – and what would have been for anyone else a lifetime's labour – was the publication of an edition of the mathematical papers of Isaac Newton.

A 63-year-old mathematician who worked as a labourer and night-watchman when he first migrated to Israel from Russia has solved a problem which has taxed the world's leading experts in his field for more than a generation.

Computer power will match the intelligence of human beings within the next 20 years because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing, according to a leading scientific "futurologist".