Alan Turing: The Enigma

Alan Turing: The Enigma

by Andrew Hodges (Author)

Synopsis

A new edition to celebrate Alan Turing's centenary, includes a new foreword by the author and a preface by Douglas Hofstadter. Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. But his vision went far beyond this crucial achievement. Before the war he had formulated the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer. Turing's far-sighted plans for the digital era forged ahead into a vision for Artificial Intelligence. However, in 1952 his homosexuality rendered him a criminal and he was subjected to humiliating treatment. In 1954, aged 41, Alan Turing committed suicide and one of Britain's greatest scientific minds was lost.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 768
Edition: New Ed
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 05 Mar 1992

ISBN 10: 0099116413
ISBN 13: 9780099116417
Book Overview: The full story behind the persecuted genius of wartime codebreaking and the computer revolution - now an Oscar-winning film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley

Media Reviews
One of the finest scientific biographies I've ever read: authoritative, superbly researched, deeply sympathetic and beautifully told * Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind *
Andrew Hodges' book is of exemplary scholarship and sympathy. Intimate, perceptive and insightful, it's also the most readable biography I've picked up in some time * Time Out *
A first-rate presentation of the life of a first-rate scientific mind * New York Times Book Review *
One of the finest scientific biographies ever written * New Yorker *
A first-rate presentation of the life of a first-rate scientific mind...it is hard to imagine a more thoughtful and warm biography than this one -- Douglas Hofstadter * New York Times Book Review *
Author Bio
Andrew Hodges is Tutor in Mathematics at Wadham College, Oxford University. His classic text of 1983, since translated into several languages, created a new kind of biography, with mathematics, science, computing, war history, philosophy and gay liberation woven into a single personal narrative. He is an active contributor to the mathematics of fundamental physics, as a follower of Roger Penrose. See www.turing.org.uk for further material.